"Nostalgia. It's heroin for old people"
- Dara O'Briain
If this is true, then this morning I had an unexpected fix.
I was cleaning the interior of my car, as you do on a Saturday when you're forty-ish and have no children, when I overheard some of the kids who live on my street. They were playing some form of hide and seek derivative but what took me by surprise was the method that they used to decide who was to be first to play seeker.
They all stood in a circle, one foot placed in the middle, and one kid recited a rhyme whilst touching each shoe in turn, a rhyme that I haven't heard for nearly thirty years:
"There's a soldier in the grass, with a bullet up his arse, pull it out, pull it out, like a good boy scout"
This is exactly the same rhyme that my friends and I used whenever we wanted random chance to lend a hand in picking someone for a game, but when I think back I definitely cannot remember being taught the words, you just knew them. Perhaps it was osmosis, perhaps it was older kids passing on their knowledge, perhaps it was just because it had the word "arse" in it, but everyone used this rhyme.
Somehow the world seemed a slightly better place this morning and I'm not even sure why.
5 comments:
I've never heard that rhyme before... maybe it never made is South of the border. We used the hugely politically incorrect "meanie minie moe..."
I don't recall that rhyme either, shocking language!
What's the world coming to etc etc
it dit dog shit,
you are not it.
Was our one to choose who wasn't het, which meant repeating it for as many players as you had. Not long or complex enough to be random so a bit lame really.
I remember it. And the "It Dit Dog Shit" one too.
Yeah, the dog shit one seemed to be used when you didn't have a lot of people if memory serves me correctly. There must be others but I can't seem to remember them.
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