On top of spaghetti

The other day, that old song popped into my head. All covered in cheese I lost my poor meatball when somebody sneezed. Or the classic "Found a Peanut", which was really quite a tragic song if you listened to the words - after all the peanut was bad and the author died from eating it...

Do you remember those ditties you learned as a child? (unfortunately, I do, often better then what I needed so badly at the grocery store). We sang or chanted them at scouts, church camp or school. How about those naughty or what we thought were snappy replies. Such as:

I'm rubber, you're glue - everything you say bounces off me and sticks to you. Clever - the first time you hear it, not the 1,483rd. Hmmm I can think of some adults that would be wise to heed those words! John Porter, the (who the hells knows why they let him write a column in a legitimate paper) columnist in the Creston News Advertiser. Most people know I'm a bit left of center in politics, but I enjoy reading well written conservative columns. But that guy is no writer! Boing....(me trying to be rubber after dissing the guy...)

But I digress. We used to jump a lot of rope. As in jumping rope. Singles, doubles. There were lots of cool chants to go with jumping:

Susie over the ocean Susie over the sea, Susie broke a milk bottle blamed it on me. I told Ma and Ma told Pa, Susie got a licking Ha Ha Ha (that's a spanking for all you youngsters out there). This was all done in a sing-song voice. Then you'd say - how many lickings did she get? and jump hot pepper - counting rapidly until you missed. And

Bluebell, cockle shell easy ivy over
Cinderella dressed in yella when upstairs to see her fella
Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack - dressed all in black

Did you ever play Chinese jump rope? It was a stretchy rubber band like rope. Or that game with the strings that you weaved around your hands and the other person would grip it the right way and make a new design on their hands...

Sometimes we used chants to pick who got to go first - like bubble gum bubble gum in a dish how many pieces do you wish? or walking - I left, left, left (in time with your steps) my home and 48 kids in a starving condition without any food...

We played a lot of outdoor games like jump rope. Guess that's why we didn't have the weight problem kids do today. You don't often see them out there jumpin' rope! We also played hop scotch - either drawing it out in chalk, or I had a plastic mat hop scotch. We played jacks - a little red ball with weird metal pieces you had to scoop up between bounces of the ball.

Four square was another wildly popular game back in the day. It was actually painted on the blacktop at our school - that must have been the officially sized squares. At home, again we'd use chalk, simply drawing out two perpendicular lines. It was harder when there were back lines to deal with - out of bounds ya know. And if you didn't have "banks". Banks were when you could block the ball before batting it back to your opponent. What about 500?

Of course I was always hugely intense in those games. Cindo was my big sis and she would tend to dominate me - never letting up just because I was younger. She was the same way in basketball - we'd go to the Reinertson's house to play (we didn't have our own hoop), and she'd be all full of herself cuz she was like a foot taller.

Our house had a flat roof - and the only two car garage around. So in my Billy Jean King years I would bat tennis balls against the wood garage door, and quite often, up onto the flat garage, or even all the way over. Okay I wasn't quite Billy Jean.

The best outdoor games were when the big kids in the neighborhood would allow us lil guys to participate in Ghost in the Graveyard, Kick the Can, and bestest of all, Sardines - the reverse hide and seek game where the seekers hide with the hider when they find him/her. It was big stuff to get to hang with the big kids. When it got dark, it was with great regret that I'd go in the house after Mom or Dad hollered for us. "Susi, Cindy, Leslie, Betsy" they'd yell. After all we're the EE sisters!
Beep Billy Ooten doten bo bo ba ditten dotten shoooo....