Never underestimate the crude creativity of
boys. I think it’s true in any culture and ever since we began
hopping around that mysterious monolith at sunrise -- the dawn of time.
In one of my earliest coming of age time
periods – roughly between the ages of 8-to-13 – it was an accepted and common
practice among my circle of friends to modernize time-honored nursery rhymes
and tales from the Brothers Grimm. We had plenty of sources to go to. In my own
home, my well-read parents kept a decent stock of orange Childcraft books.
Certainly, the satirical Mad and Cracked
magazines, and episodes of Fractured Fairy Tales from The Rocky and Bullwinkle
Show added fuel to our thought processes.
I hadn’t thought much about such boyhood trivialities until the other day, when I overhead a radio advertisement hawking a local social service with an instrumental version of “Mary Had a Little Lamb” playing in the background. Suddenly, I was11 years old again and remembering the all-too-familiar stupid verses...
Mary
had a little hog,
And kept him fat and
drunk.
And when the price of
bacon went up,
She butchered the
little punk.
It was too late. The
floodgate had been raised and the irreverent verses of old gushed with tsunami
force. The hounds had been unleashed. And isn’t it strange how many nursery
rhymes are based on miscommunication, the complexities of human relationships
and the consequences of our actions? For
example…
Simple Simon met a
Pie-Man going to the fair.
Said Simple Simon to
the Pie-Man,
“What have you got
there?”
Said Pie-Man to
Simple Simon,
“Pies, you dumb ass!"
Or…
Peter, Peter Pumpkin
Eater,
Had a wife but wouldn’t
feed her.
Put her in a pumpkin
shell,
And when he died he
went to Hell.
This also…
Georgie Porgie,
pudding and pie,
Kissed the girls and
made them cry.
And when the boys
came out to save the lasses,,
Georgie Porgie, threatened
to kick their asses.
How about…
Old Mother Hubbard,
Went to the cupboard,
To give the poor dog
some honey:
When she came there,
The cupboard was
bare,
Father Hubbard had
stolen the money.
And, of course, the timeless
classic…
Jack and Jill went up
the hill,
To fetch a little rum.
Well, silly Jill
forgot her pill,
And now they have a
son!
Many verses we recited
carried themes of violence and strange, vexing outcomes. No doubt, these were
energized by the Zen-like lessons learned from Maharishi Wile E. Coyote.
Humpty Dumpty sat on
the wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a
great fall.
All the King’s horses
and all the King’s men,
Ate scrambled eggs
for breakfast again!
Don't forget...
Little Miss Muffett,
Sat on a tuffet,
Eating her curds and
whey.
Out came a gall
stone,
And busted her
jawbone,
Now she has nothing
to say.
Even innocent animals
could not avoid such fates.
Hey diddle, diddle,
the cat and the fiddle,
Took a leak on the
kitchen clock.
The little dog
laughed to see such a sport,
Then got fried with electrical shock!
Basic decency keeps
me from exploring the dynamics of what those three men were doing while
rub-a-dub-dubbing in the tub, why Little Jack Horner was cowering in the corner
and the reason behind Old King Cole having such a merry old soul.
Looking back, I don’t
really think we re-invented these and other nursery rhymes. We might have
tweaked and edited them some, but the underlying story lines had been passed on
to us from older friends, our Dads and the proverbial crusty uncles always
inviting us to pull their fingers.
In the end, boys
transform and take on the burdens, responsibilities and the myriad joys of
morphing into men.
But we never forget
the beckoning siren echoes of of boyhood.
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