Ancient Chinese Secret!

Have you seen that commercial where four nearly-middle-aged women are in an elevator and they spontaneously break into the old-school hand-clapping game Miss Mary Mack? (I can’t even remember what product the commercial was advertising, so kudos to the marketing department on that one.)

Hearing the Miss Mary Mack song for the first time in like 30+ years got me to thinking about other games we used to play when I was a kid in the 1970’s…..Kick the Can, Ringoleavio, Red Light Green Light One Two Three….(then we got PONG and childhood as we knew it came to an end...)

The playground game we used to play the most during recess at Catholic school was Chinese Jump Rope (a detailed description of the game can be found here. )
All you needed was three players, an elastic band, and the ability to jump chest high with your legs spread-eagle whilst jumping on the rope and yelling “Kill It!” (a skill that is highly prized in today’s job market).

I couldn’t quite remember the nonsensical chant that we used to say during the game…it was something Chinese sounding (at least to our Americanized ears) like “Itsy Me Si Gi Loco Hotsi Totsi Kill It”….so I did an internet search and was surprised to learn how obscure our little version of the game was. Apparently most children chant “In, out, side, side, etc”….how boringly unoriginal!. I did find one variation of our chant - Itchy me, star shee, Logo hutsy yutsy. - kill it' - and a reference that called the game ‘Itchy me’ and traced it back to Oxford England circa 1985. And then lo and behold, after numerous Google searches, I found a posting on a message board by a woman who linked the nonsensical chant to the Japanese numbers for 1-10 - Ichi, Ni, San, Shi, Go, Roku, Shichi, Hachi, Kyuu, Juu – it’s not exactly the same but close enough to conclude that our little playground chant was a bastardized version of Japanese counting. So there you go. Mystery solved.

So much for the 1985 Oxford, England origin, we were doing it on Long Island as early as 1973….so nannie nannie pooh pooh! (of course, where we got it from I have no idea)

I suppose the only reason why this crazy game sticks in my head is because I experienced one of my most humiliating grade-school moments while playing it. I was airborne getting reading to execute a waist-high Kill It when my foot caught on the rope and down I went in a heap, landing face down in a puddle. My uniform jumper was soaked, and after being berated by the nearest nun I was forced to spend the rest of the recess period sitting in the classroom next to the heater. With plaid wetness sticking to my thighs I could only stare out the window at all the other kids having fun, knowing full well that I would be the object of ridicule as soon as the other kids came pouring into the classroom at recess’ end.

Sigh…I should have stuck to Miss Mary Mack…

The St. Martin of Tours Expedition

We had about 3" of snow on Wednesday.
It was fine granular snow topped by a thick layer of sleet and ice - the kind of snow that you can walk on without sinking in - kind of like Jesus walking on water. I liked it because I could push the snow off my car while suspended 3" off the ground, making it easy to clean off the roof. Which brings me to my pet peeve of the day: people who don't clean off their vehicles and drive along cluelessly as huge chunks of snow and ice fly off pelting the cars behind them. Do they not look in their rear view mirrors and notice the chaos they're causing? OK, people who are vertically-challenged (a.k.a. short) have an excuse - it's hard to clean off the roof of an SUV when your head barely clears the side-view mirror.......which leads me to brilliant-idea-to-eliminate-pet-peeve: modify car washes to melt snow off of vehicles (trucks included) - a lot of car washes already blow air on cars to dry them off, why not blow hot air to melt the snow/ice?
Just a thought.


Walking on the snow yesterday brought back a childhood memory that I hadn't revisited in years (cue flashback music)…….
Picture it, 1970 something….My younger brother L and I are trudging off to elementary school the day after a major storm has dumped over a foot of snow on Long Island. It was the same kind of snow we had this past Wednesday, only there was a lot more of it. On our way to school we cut across a wooded empty lot, as we did every day, but half way across the lot the icy snow layer that had been supporting our weight began to give way. We'd put one foot in front of us and for a split second we were walking on solid ground, then **crack-kerplunk** we'd be thigh high in snow. This treacherous dance continued all the way across the lot. When we finally reached the shoveled sidewalk on the other side of the lot we were met with a 4 foot wall of snow blocking our access to the street that we needed to cross. We ascended the mountain only to find that getting over it would entail shimmying down the other side right into the path of traffic.

It had taken us so long to get to this point that the usually ever present crossing guard had packed up and gone home. The school was a mere two blocks away.
I slid down the snow embankment into the street and hugged the snow wall as closely as I could but after nearly getting hit by a car I scrambled back up. I told my brother L. to stay put and I distinctly remember fearing for his safety (which is odd, because normally I was the one who was beating him up).
Of course I'm probably remembering this wrong as it is more likely that L. was the one who jumped down into traffic while I cowered on the snow mound above, but either way, being the older sister I made the executive decision that we would both return home. The path to school was impassible on that day.

We trudged back the way we came (ignoring the shoveled side-walk that circumvented the lot) moving slowly through the thigh-high snow (because it added to the dramatic effect of our hopeless retreat) and upon arriving back home announced to our mother that we had made a valiant effort, but St.Martins was unreachable and was most likely closed as a result of the storm.
She sighed in disgust, threw us in the back of her car and drove us the quarter mile to school. The school was open of course, but by this time L. and I were extremely late and our uniforms were soaking wet from our expedition. As a final act of humiliation we had to wait in the nurse's office and dry off before we were allowed to go to class.

We always remember the one that got away…**sigh**
It was the snow day that almost was.


…and now here it is, you're moment of Zen:

You say potato I say po-TAH-to

My SO (significant other) thinks it's hilarious that I pronounce the word 'vocabulary' as "vo-CAB-u-LERRY " rather than "VO-cab-u-LARRY"….I in turn think it's hysterical that she pronounces the word 'horror' as "WHORE-ore" rather than "HARR-err".
She's from southern California, I'm from Long Island.
What can I say, we crack each other up.

I feel a Blogthings quiz coming on:

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Northeast Judging by how you talk you are probably from north Jersey, New York City, Connecticut or Rhode Island. Chances are, if you are from New York City (and not those other places) people would probably be able to tell if they actually heard you speak.
Philadelphia
The Inland North
The Midland
The South
Boston
The West
North Central
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

I'm intrigued to see that I've been pegged as being from "New York City or Connecticut" rather than Long Island (pronounced "Lawn GUY-Land"). It corroborates what every person up here in New England tells me whenever I tell them I'm originally from Long Island: "I would have never known - you don't have an accent." As if the only thing that Long Islanders are known for is their accent. C'mon people! We gave the world Billy Joel, Joey Buttafuoco, and a gaggle of Baldwin brothers and serial killers. (Long Island is 25 miles wide and has a population of 3 million people - you'd kill each other too). We have Levittown, the Long Island Expressway, and the Amityville Horror (HARR-er) House. We're splitting atoms at Stony Brook, we built the Lunar Lander in Bethpage (right behind my parent's house), and we have more unpronounceable Indian town names than New Jersey….all together now: Syosset, Massapequa, Hauppauge…..

I'll admit that after seven years of living with Ms. Southern California I now pronounce 'water' as "WAH-TER" rather than "WAW-TA".….and I used to think that only people on the Brady Bunch and the fantasy world of TV talked that way. We didn't talk (TAWK) that way in the real world. :::sigh:::….I've been corrupted, I've been lured over to the dark side….I guess I'll go study my vocab-u-lerry now.


....and now here it is, your moment of Zen: