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I kind of find it
sad that nothing I write will ever be as immortally
resonant as "eeny-meeny-miney, a bug went up my hiney."
Naturally, I am referencing the mini-nonsensical theme popularly used
to pick teams for various playground games in grade school. It's one
of many that I'm sure you've heard. You know, the "catch a tiger by
the toe" songs. This particular "legendary" song ends with "took a
smell, down it fell, eeny-meeny-miney."
Come on. Just read that crap. Is this
the kind of writing that lasts
forever? These "works" don't even adhere to traditional structure of
any popular prose,
are way too short and are historically benign to
marking any significant
events. And quite frankly, I find them
completely
immature and arbitrary in subject matter (by the way, I'm
working on a sequel to "Babies are Overrated").
It's not that I'm bitter
against these no-talent little twerps who are
writing trash yet ultimately reaping rewards more valuable than a
Pulitzer. It's just that I am insanely jealous of them.
The mysterious nature of these little playground themes is what annoys
me most. Who the hell came up with these things? Did one child make
these up? Did several children hold some playground session of
congress spanning more than a week, requiring all of their collective
creativity and multiple bags of milk for sustenance?
Or did some really pathetic dad write these down and give them to his
son?
"Daddy. You expect me to say this
on the playground? This is
ridiculous! How will this help us pick teams?" the child probably
asked.
"I don't ask you for a lot, son," he replied, sitting at his rolltop
desk. "I'm still really upset over my donkey dying and I really would
appreciate if you'd spread this around."
My guess is somewhere, at some point in history (my guess: the '50s),
there was indeed this group of lame/creative children who made up
these playground themes to make picking who was "it" for hide and seek
more fun.
But that requires organization and drive. None of the children I knew
had
this. The children I grew up with had a rough time not eating stickers.
I think I know who's behind all this.
Here's a clue. Perhaps I should be more specific when I use the term
"children" by instead using the term "horrendously slow children."
These are the children who would most benefit from some completely
random system of picking who was "it" or choosing teams for sports.
This aided in ensuring they never again got picked after the anemic
albino girl who sneezed on her food that one time.
I was always sort of an advocate of these rhymes. But it wasn't
because I was physically inferior. I was awesome. I could run like the
wind. And I'm talking about old school wind. Before the wind got its
medals taken away for positively testing for anabolic steroids.
The reason I loved these rhymes so much was because they were so easy
to manipulate to "fix" the teams. Everyone knew that douche who would
say "Sky blue sky blue all out but YOU." Only he wouldn't count one
foot per syllable. He'd often count two feet of his friends and
naturally end on, you guessed it: the fat rascal.
I was that guy.
"DO OVER! DO OVER!" the rascal would often shout, flailing his comedic
limbs about.
"Are you questioning the system?" I'd reply (only at the time I worded
in a way a 6 year old would. So it'd be something like "No way, you
farty poo poo!")
Realizing his situation, he'd either bow his head in defeat or share
his M&M's as a bargain. And either way, everyone was a winner.
So again I leave you with another dead-end column. I've once again
laid out the important issues of our time, yet it all will amount to
bupkis because it doesn't involve bubblegum in a dish, bugs falling
out of colons or someone's mom particularly believing I'm the best.
Screw you, chubby kid.
©2004 Tim Landry
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