Skip to main content

Little Misses Mary Mack and Lucy


My son is back in camp after the weekend away. Sometimes when I pick him up, he has a repertoire of chanting, singy-songs he goes through. Often these are unfamiliar to me, but sometimes I am stunned to hear the same words sung by him and and his classmates that I sang when I was in grade school myself, all those years ago and in a different city. The latest one is "Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack; all dressed in black, black, black" with those silver buttons down her back. How do kids all end up with these same songs? I have a hard time imagining parents teaching them. How do these silly, nonsense songs survive generation to generation? Who knows. But now that I'm thinking about these songs (and the clapping games that went with them), here's another I remember from when I was perhaps a couple of years older than my son is now. I haven't heard this one from him yet. Maybe you'll remember it, too. If you do (or even if you don't), hope it brings a smile.

Miss Lucy had a steamboat, the steamboat had a bell.
Miss Lucy went to heaven and the steamboat went to—
HELL-o, operator, please give me number nine,
and if you disconnect me, I will paddle your—
BEHIND the 'frigerator, there was a piece of glass
Miss Lucy sat upon it and she broke her little—
ASK me no more questions, I'll tell you no more lies.
The boys are in the bathroom, pulling down their—
FLIES are in the city, the bees are in the park,
The boys and girls are kissing in the
D-A-R-K dark!

Labels:

Comments

Maria Verivaki said…
sometimes i remember crazy verses from my childhood, which make absolutely no sense to my children (or any modern children)
July 14, 2009 at 2:44 AM

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tap Root Manuscript

Here is an early music memory: I am very young. If not still a toddler, then not much older. I am running around the living room, squealing with unrestrained delight, while my dad chases me to the tune of "I Am the Lion" by Neil Diamond (Ba-pa-la ding-ga!). He's reached deep down and pulled out his big baritone voice—the one he also used for "Old Man River" on occasion; the one that always awed me. It's the early 1970s, and although hopelessly pop and showy, there is no shame in liking Neil Diamond. Not at this time. Later, I'd go through nearly two decades of keeping this (admittedly) often schmaltzy artist at more than arm's length. When I bothered to remember Neil Diamond, which generally I didn't, I thought of him more like a skeleton in my musical closet; a dirty little secret that, if exposed, would set me up for some heavy razzing from friends. I don't remember when it was that I recovered my dad's Tap Root Manuscript album. It wa...
7 comments
Read more

Keith Jarrett, Carnegie Hall

It was only last night, but already it rates among my most powerful memories—one I know will reverberate down time's lonely corridors, enduring where the daily slush of logistical life (thankfully) does not. Yesterday contained plenty of logistical craziness, but by 8:00 PM I was seated in the last row of the dress circle at Carnegie Hall next to my father, looking down on a stage empty but for a single piano, a bench, and a collection of microphones wired for the live recording of Keith Jarrett's solo improvisational performance. I have always loved these charged moments of anticipation before a performance, and I expected this concert to be something special—that much more so because the tickets came through a friend of a very dear friend in California, a last-minute opportunity to be seized, and because a love of Keith Jarrett was transmitted to me by my father, and this was a great way to thank him for bringing awareness of this man's music into my life. But this is all...
12 comments
Read more

S.A.R.T.

It's late at night, and you're alone in your apartment, tired but on high alert, unable to sleep. In the dark, you pray. Despite the fact that at this time in your life you would never describe yourself as a "religious" person, it is definitely a true prayer, not the bargaining offer of an exchange ( I'll reform, if only . . . ); you are not the one in need. You are the one whose job it is to help those in crisis, and although you signed up for this gig, you wish desperately that your job didn't exist, wasn't needed—not tonight, not anytime. Not while you are the volunteer on call, committed to driving at whatever hour of the night to whatever hospital emergency room phones in a case of sexual assault. Given that a possible career in criminal law was what brought me to St. Louis, it's easy to see how I found my way to S.A.R.T., the city's Sexual Assault Response Team. The program was (still is) based out of the Metro St. Louis Y.W.C.A. For voluntee...
6 comments
Read more