What ‘Childlore’ Do You Still Remember?
The other day, my six-year-old, Margot, turned to me and declared: “Mommy, I’m going to show you how to draw something that you DON’T know how to draw.” She asked to borrow my notebook, which, naturally, I handed right over. I remember these things — learning some weird little doodle at school and feeling so psyched to have someone to show it to. I thought of that as she took her pencil, and carefully drew — well, wait. Do you want to guess? I’ll give you a hint: It starts with three vertical lines.
That’s right: THE S THING!!! Did you know kids are still drawing the S thing?! I almost screamed when Margot held it up to show me. “What?” she asked, as I gasped and cackled, my brain instantly flooded with elementary school ephemera: the drawings, the playground rhymes, the cootie shots and catchers. “Nothing!” I said. “That’s so great; you’ve GOT to show daddy.” He actually did scream when he saw it.
The incident really sent me down the rabbit hole — and I was delighted to find there is one, like, officially. “The Cool S,” is an artifact of childlore: the culture and rituals of children. By definition, it’s the stuff kids learn from other kids, then spread it among each other, entirely independent of adults or technology. Think: the buttercup test, “crack an egg on your head,” Miss Mary Mack, jinx (double jinx!), and anything you learned from your cousins. There’s a long history of anthropologic study on this topic, which I love, because really, what a fun and deeply annoying field of research it must be. Imagine trying to get a first-grader to explain why saying the same word at the same time means one of you is not allowed to speak again, until they are “un-jinxed.” (Has anyone ever been successfully un-jinxed, by the way? I think I’m still technically waiting.) Kids have apparently been drawing The Cool S since at least the 1980s, and still, no one’s figured out where it came from.
Ever since Margot drew the S, childlore has been my favorite conversation starter. It’s great to watch everyone’s faces go slack as their own memories unlock and spill out all over the place. “Remember typing ‘BOOBS’ on a calculator?!” someone will blurt. “Or — or that thing when you’re driving by a cemetery and you have to hold your breath?” I love hearing the tiny differences in details (some people grew up lifting their feet off the floor when passing a graveyard). But what’s wild is how many of us grew up doing, drawing, singing, and believing the exact same funny little things: Miss Susie had a steamboat, Batman smelled, the floor was lava, and stepping on cracks broke our mothers’ backs. What’s even more wild — and kind of wonderful — is knowing that, although we have aged out of the culture of childhood, there are children out there, still carrying on the silly, gross traditions of our people. That Cool S will still be popping up in notebooks long after we’re gone. And somewhere out there, a research scientist is trying to figure out the deal with six-seven. Godspeed, friend.
So, I’m DYING to ask: What childlore do you remember? Personally, I still can’t believe the word “gullible” isn’t in the dictionary.
P.S. The funniest game to play with kids (a childlore classic!) and kids’ hilarious passive-aggressive notes.
(Photo of a puppet show in Paris, 1963, by Alfred Eisenstaedt.)
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129 commentsI am shocked that ctrl-F is showing me not a single instance of the word snow! Maybe it’s just a Northeast thing, but I definitely remember wearing my pajamas inside out and backwards when there was snow in the forecast to get it to snow enough to get a snow day from school the next day. Years later when I was a teacher, I asked my 1st-3rd graders about their snow day traditions – no pajama ones, but they flushed ice cubes and slept with a spoon under their pillow.
Criss cross apple sauce, Spiders crawling up your back. Cool breeze, tight squeeze, now you’ve got the willies! Circle circle, dot dot, now you’ve got the cootie shot. Circle circle, square square, now you’ve got it everywhere. Circle circle, knife knife, now you’ve got it all your life! Sticking mechanical pencil lead into the arm like injecting a needle.
the lie of the american dream
Bloody Mary; Light as a feather, stiff as a board; Miss Mary Mack and the clapping game; Miss Suzy had a Steamboat; the paper fortune-telling game; slug bugs and punch buggies.
Kid legend.. If you swung a swing over the crossbar and right around over the top, you’d turn inside out.. didn’t stop us from trying to.. (and adult me knows that the laws of physics kept that from happening)
Small town Ontario gal here (shout out to Stratford!) – we said padiddle too but even more popular was yelling “beaverwhack!” (and punching the shoulder of whoever was next to you) whenever you saw a car with wood paneling (almost always a station wagon). Anyone else?!
I only learned the Cool S in the late 2000s when I was already a teenager; people were having nostalgia about the ’80s and ’90s. The more things change, the more they stay the same, I suppose. In grade school we had “Safety/Doorknob.” Basically if somebody broke wind, they would be obligated to say “Safety.” If somebody else said “doorknob,” they’d be able to punch them once (unless the original offender was able to touch a doorknob first). We kept changing the rules, though, mostly because under the default rules it basically amounted to volunteering to be punched, and nobody understood why that would happen.
As kids in the 80s, we casually passed around a LOT of rhymes, etc. by word of mouth that would be considered EXTREMELY offensive by today’s standards, full of bodily functions, racial stereotypes, violence like shooting the teacher, burning the school down, etc. I’d never repeat them to a child nowadays, but I wonder how much of this kind of thing still goes around.
In the 1990’s I worked for a book distributor in the warehouse pulling books. One of them was a compilation of all the ways kids had changed the Barney The Purple Dinosaur song. There were dozens of them from US coast to coast. I have forgotten all but one, which went ‘I hate you. You hate me. Let’s go out and shoot Barney, And a shot rang out and Barney hit the floor. No more purple dinosaur!’
Visiting Germany, I saw a man punch his son in the arm. The man saw me see him, and quickly explained that it was a game, when you saw a certain car model you punched the other person. I said we have the same thing in the US, but with “punch buggies” (Volkswagens). He said that would not work in Germany!
Slug bug beetle bug what color was it! And you could punch the other until they guessed the color of the car (if they didn’t see it!)
I have an enlarged copy of that photo hanging in my living room. I came across it on the Time-Life website. The photographer for Life magazine said he was hanging around this puppet show of Prince George Slays The Dragon in Paris in 1963 waiting for the right time to snap a picture. He said that just as the dragon was killed the kids erupted in excitement and he knew he had his shot and snapped it.
This weekend we are opening our summer cottage in Ontario (Canada) with my sister’s family. During this long weekend in May, the five cousins ages line up perfectly- this year they’re 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12. We have a bumper crop of dandelions this spring, and the kids were picking them. Imagine my surprise when I heard one of the kids sing, “mommy had a baby and her head POPPED off!” And during the POP, flicked the head of the dandelion off. Did anyone else sing this, or is it a Canadian thing?
We 100% did this! Although I grew up in Rochester, NY—so if it originated in Ontario, it didn’t have that far to travel to get to me. We also could pay for our school lunches with Canadian change mixed in—no one bothered to worry about the difference with American coins.
We did the same thing in Pennsylvania int the 80s. There was also another dandelion game where you smeared the yellow color from the flower down someone’s forearm while saying “baby went pee pee down the stairs!”
I don’t remember what these things were called but they were made by folding up a standard sheet of paper, they you would write different things in the folds, like 1,2,3 or 4, or red, white, green, blue and they would end with a crazy fortune or some such… you would put your fingers in the openings then the other person would next guess the number or color and your fingers would fold the “flower” or cube-like ornament back and forth to reveal the next ??? It almost looked like a strange flower that would open and close with your fingers. (I can actually “see” this thing in my head, buy cannot recall it’s name but all “us kids” back home (in Altadena, California – the Eaton Fires last year) used to make this game! I gave into asking AI an of course it knew!!! We called them “Fortune Teller” but I guess others called it a Cootie Catcher!
I remember that and tried to show my 4 yr old niece (maybe 60 yrs later). I wasn’t sure what types of fortunes kids would relate to now. I wrote fortunes “like your husband will have a long dark beard”. that was pretty shocking for her. but she loved it. I’m hoping she will do something like that with her family.
Mine is O.R.E.O, do you remember that, it’s were kids play rock paper seicors kinda but they say O.R.E.O and whoever wins get to pick who the lost “dates” for a day and the loser has to say “I lost in a game of Oreo” and the person that the winner chose either says yes or no, yes means they date for a day and no means thay don’t. Thank you gor giving me the chance to talk about this, this is one of my favorite topics!
I have a friend from the army who now has a 9 year old daughter. She wrote this on Facebook, so I’m paraphrasing: My daughter said ‘Mommy, you’ve GOT to hear this song I found!’ So, I let her connect to the Bluetooth in the car, fully expecting to hear k-pop or something similar. I was fully not expecting the first line of Welcome to the Black Parade. My little apple fell at the trunk!
My dad and I would randomly back and forth say: “You remind of man, What man? A man with a power. What power? The power of hoodoo. Who do? You do! Do what? Remind me of a man….and so on.
Oh my goodness! This is from a movie and I do this with my dad and I’ve never met anyone else who does!
Lena–my favorite book that I frequently checked out of the library was ” A Rocket in My Pocket” compiled by Carl Withers. One day when I was an adult I suddenly realized I could buy it and did! This verse is in there along with many others you may remember from childhood–a lot of jump rope rhymes, etc. Enjoy!
my son said to my the other day “mommy, do you know what a conjunction is?” and I immediately sang the School House Rock song “conjunction junction, what’s your function?”…..he couldn’t believe I knew it!!!! hahaha
I remember that song in 5th grade 😂 so relatable 😅
Love this. This winter at Xmas time I was delighted to find out from my child that 40 years later, Batman still smells and Robin laid an egg. The very same jingle bells parody waa still going around school.
Love this! We sang this on car rides with siblings: “Going down the highway, doing 55. [Insert sibling name here] laid a big one, we couldn’t even drive. Engine wouldn’t take it, wheels fell apart… all because of [sibling name]’s supersonic fart.” I strongly dislike the word “fart” but for some reason that makes me laugh now so hard, I cry. If my elementary aged boys sang this now, I’d be horrified. Maybe a little. After I laughed and laughed, that is.
I still recall cartoons coming on on Saturday mornings, Captain Kangaroo, Tay Raynor and Friends, Bozo’s Circus, Garfield Goose, All in the Family (When it actually aired weekly), Mary Tyler Moore Show, Mister Roger’s Neighborhood, Zoom, The Electric Company, Sesame Street–Before the Count was introduced,Creature Feature movies, Night Gallery,Rockford Files–not the EPSTEIN FILES! 😆 🤣 😂 Well, I could on and on like School House Rock, Lost in Space, Land of the Lost, Charlie’s Angel’s,etc., etc….
MTM show is so much fun! She’s fantastic in the Dick van Dyke show too. I love the “old” female comediennes who trailblazed (Lucille Barnet, MTM, Carol Burnett). And, gee, school house rock is the background music to my childhood Saturday mornings. I could never choose which Charlie’s Angel I wanted to be… but still like to feather my hair not too far off from Farrah! Thanks for the great memories!
My 2 year old daughter and I scored hand-made bracelets from the little free library in our neighborhood yesterday. I remember making the EXACT same ones as a kid! (Soft, stretchy colorful bands). We wore them all day. <3
Anyone else remember the rose garden game you’d do on someone’s arm? Lots of poking, scratching, and pinching to make your inner forearm turn bright red.
Yes!!
Is it like pinch poke you own me a coke. That’s the one I remember it made my arm so red 😅
The S thing has been around since at least the 1970s, as I learned it in elementary school. I always thought it was just a Paramount, CA thing! The way we heard “jinx” in my family is, if you say the same word, one shouts, “Jinx! You owe me a soda.” Love all the child lore things! Thanks for this!
There was the lore about your face freezing in a funny expression. Like, if you made a crazy-eyed face with tongue out, someone would say, ‘you’re face is going to freeze like that’. That was probably parents trying to get us to stop with the faces. The rumor was if someone hit you on your back while you were making the face, it would for sure freeze in place. I
if you crossed your eyes for to long they would stay in that position
now, with video calls, that “your face willl freeze that way” has become prophetic! I think of it every time somebody gets “frozen” in a goofy expression. I hope that is the only thing that becomes “real”; I’d hate to have my head come off one day because it became unattached, or my thumbs fall off because I didn’t keep them on the piano keyboard when playing (those were actually from teachers, not kiddos.) My child’s best friend introduced me to “Mama had a baby and her head popped off!” It was disconcerting. But there were so many rhymes I learned that referred to horrible things happening when babies were born!
There’s a book I read many years ago called ‘One Potatoes, Two Potato”. It was a sort of anthropological study of the folklore of American children. It was written a bit before my time, I think—maybe the early 60s—but as an older Gen X much of the lore was familiar. There were regional variations, traditions specific to certain places (eg kids in military bases) etc. There was some discussion of how these things traveled in an era before the internet—older siblings to younger; family gatherings with folks coming from different home towns. It seems an integral part of childhood, but I wonder if the lore is more homogeneous geographically now and whether the “old” lore survives.
my coworker recently brought in her cootie catcher (or fortune teller, im sure there are lots of names for it!) that she kept from middle school. it was so much fun to see her fortunes and connect on a shared childhood experience. another one recently – playing MASH with my nieces!! just the absolute best to discover they already knew the game and we all took turns playing.
I was very blessed to have gone to school at an International Campus in Europe and the British kids our age would teach us stuff and we would teach them stuff in return. One that sticks in my mind was “London Bridge is falling down” and my little sister learnt “Faire Jaquac” and my older sister did her Senior Year of High School there and became best friends with a Greek girl her age. We have more in common than we do separately!
“Frere Jacques” = Brother John. :)
Recently, I took my two-year-old son to the park, where he made friends with a girl of about six or seven. She proceeded to show him (and me haha) how to make daisy chains. It gave me that same warm feeling of, ahhh the kids are still doing kid things, isn’t that so great??
I always assumed the S came from kids copying the Stussy S/skate culture – which makes sense given when it arose. But it could be that Stussy copied the kids? I remember hitting the inside roof of the car when running a yellow light.
The Game. Nose Goes. We called single headlights “Popeye”. We (cousins and siblings) would try to say “I did not tell Antonio to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge” without laughing or sounding suspicious. I don’t know why or where this one came from.
as a 44-year-old woman, you will never not see me holding my breath through a tunnel. ;-)
I’m from the UK so some of ours were different but so many the same! Buttercups under your chin, 8008S on a calculator, the super S, various versions of Batman smells, cats cradle, french skipping with elastic, not stepping on cracks… We also had some which might just have been specific to the UK (or my tiny rural school) – don’t pick dandelion flowers (fine for the clocks so you can still get a wish!) as the juice from the stems makes you wet yourself, picking sweet nettle flowers to suck (I loved teaching my daughter that a couple of years ago), singing in the playground ‘We are the Baumber Girls, we wear our hair in curls, we wear our dungarees upon our sexy knees, ta ra ra boom de ay, my knickers flew away, they came back yesterday, ta ra ra boom de ay’ (not sure I’ll be passing on that one…!)
As a grandfather on whom several grands are trying, or tried, to be a bad influence, let me assure you that there will always be many new children’s songs that feature underwear, or the lack thereof: I just lost my underwear, I don’t care, I’ll go bare, Bye bye undies. You were very close to me, Tickled me, Hee hee hee, Bye bye undies … or in a more martial tone, Underwear! Underwear! Get a pair, any pair I can wear! I left mine lying Outside for drying Now I can’t find them anywhere!
We called French skipping with elastic Chinese jump rope (I think it’s the same thing?) “in out side side in out on”
I teach english as a second language to 5th graders in Spain. My favorite class of the year is introducing them to MASH as a way to practice prediction language. They LOVE it.
I want your job!! ML Teacher EEUU
Does anyone remember playing, light as a feather, stiff as a board at sleepovers?? While also making necklaces out of starburst wrappers
Yes!! We did the bracelets out of gum wrappers folding them back and forth – had totally forgotten!
And “Rabbit rabbit” on the first of the month. Pretty sure I learned this from that weird popsicle stick puppet on Nickelodeon.
Stick Stickly 4eva
YES!! My mom still texts me Rabbit Rabbit at the beginning of every month :) Also, I will never forget: Write to me, stick stickley PO Box 963 New York City, New York State 10108
Also, when you’re driving in the Chevy and you’re feeling something heavy, diarrha! diarrhea!
Im sure this is a repeat but; jinx, double jinx owe me a Coke! And we yelled “paddidle” and punched the ceiling of the car anytime we saw a car with one headlight out. And remember “punch buggy” anytime you saw a VW bug (or a car with wooden trim?) and punching the kid next to you in the car in the shoulder?
Punchbuggy no punch backs! See almost none of those care anymore!
Jingle Bell! Batman smells! Robin laid an egg! The Batmobile lost one wheel, And the Joker got away! (Sung to the tune of “Jingle Bells”)
great memory thanks for filling in all the words
Don’t know the cool S, but we did the buttercup test with dandelions. If you said the same word at the same time, you had to link pinkie fingers.
Sorry to probably repeat but paper fortune tellers ftw! My third grader had a marketplace project where they created and “sold” various paper items. My husband and I went bananas when we saw one in his stash. A few months later, he made a birthday-themed one for our cousin who turned 64 and she squealed when she saw it.
Bahaha, your choice to end with a “six seven” reference really tickled my funny bone! I actually find that trend endearing because I’m like, “Wow, that generation already has its own culture!”
Playing MASH at sleep overs. And the ‘Miss Susie had a baby…’
I grew up playing with friends in a park near train tracks. Anytime a train went by you had to immediately sit down and put your feet in the air.
We had knock the bridge down- it’s a car game. You say it as the car goes under a bridge, quickly and the bridge is supposed to crumble on the baddies in the car chasing you
Chewing gum wrapper paper chains… they had to be the long sticks of gum, like wrigleys and the paper chain would smell like the gum you used for a long time. Also, passing exquisite corpse drawings back and forth in class (where you can only see one third of the drawing at a time, and you either draw a head, a body, or the legs. The weirder the better!)
My sister had a LONG gum wrapper paper chain back in the 70s. I’ve never heard anyone mentioning them until your comment! Thanks for the memory!
Exquisite Corpse was actually invented by the Surrealists in France back in the 20s, I believe, and had a poetry version as well. I remember the drawing version from when I was in middle school in the mid 60s, but I don’t recall us doing the poetry version back then.
I haven’t seen this one yet and I apologize if it’s too disgusting. But kids, maybe especially boys, appreciate the disgusting. Ole Oleson two houses down taught me this one. It’s recited while pointing to the appropriate body part: Milk, milk, lemonade. Around the corner, fudge is made. From California’s Central Valley in the 60s.
I remember this. I was a kid in Southern CA in the 90’s
Australian here, I remember it too but I had Californian cousins who might have taught me
… did you not have the second verse: Stick your finger up the hole and out comes a tootsie roll!
OMG I learned that from a girl in Central Wisconsin in the lat3 60’s!
This post is fabulous, hopeful and made me laugh so hard I cried! Thank you CupOfJo!!!
Ok, I have a few. These might be repeats. When we were riding in a car with friends or siblings and saw a Volkswagen Beetle we would sock someone nearby in the arm and yell, “Slug bug, no returns!” It wasn’t a hard hit or we would get hit back, sure enough even if we did say “no returns!” Another one if me and a friend said the same thing at the same time we would try to be the first to say , “Jinx! Buy me a coke!” Just recently on a field trip with my kids we all traveled in a school bus. We live in Wisconsin so it was chilly in the bus and the bus driver had the heater turned on high. The condensation in the bus was freezing on the inside of the windows as it so often does on a winter morning her and then it’s fun to draw things in the frost. My favorite is to press the side of my fist again the glass to make a little foot print and then use my fingers to make toes. It looks like a baby footprint on the window.
We used to punch each other if we saw a car with one headlight out and would yell “Punch buggy! No take backs!”.
Mine was “punch buggy! No punch backs!”
I’m from Cleveland and I am with you on all of these memories! The baby foot in the bus window, ahhh!
We said Pediddle for a Beetle.
My 30-year old cousin (father to twin daughters) lost a fantasy football league and has the “cool S” as a tattoo…
60+ reader here … just have to say this is a fabulous post. What trip down memory lane!
The absolute rite of passage that was learning to whistle by cupping your hands and blowing on a piece of grass. When I was in the second grade, if you couldn’t do that you weren’t cool LOL
Punchbuggy no returns. Rock paper scissors and thumb wars- always good when you in a line with your kids. But my question is- whatever happened to quicksand? It was such a prevalent trap in all the shows and then……, where did it go?
Growing up in the 80s I really thought quicksand was going to be a big part of my adult life!!
My husband and I grew up on the otherside of the world to each other…there are sooo many differences in our experiences of childhood but there are so many occasions in which we seem to have shares the same (maybe best to call it) teen-lore. How is it possible that before either of us had internet we both knew The Rumour about Marilyn Manson’s ribs? Though while my classmates were writing BOOBIES in the calculcators, my husband and his pals were writing LEBLEBI- the name of a chickpea snack- *cuties*
A few months ago, I brought upMarilyn Manson rib rumor to my husband (no clie why). We are both in our mid-40s. I grew up in NJ and he in the UK. He knew it too, but Prince! His older cousin in Hong Kong had heard it was David Bowie about 5 years before. Is it strange that if I were a scientist I’d apply for a grant to figure out how these rumors crossed continents and generations pre-world wide web?
And remember Richard Gere and the hamster??
OMG, for us, in Texas, in the 70’s, it was Rod Stewart had to have his stomach pumped because SEMEN! LMFAO!
Stop… the Marilyn Manson thing isn’t true? lol!
In case nobody else did, I have to share these earrings: https://studiocult.co/products/s-thing-earring-2-0
This brought the biggest smile to my face. Such a fun post and brought back so many memories!
How about the straw worms? You scrunch up the wrapper on a straw, pull it off, then drop tiny drops of water on it and watch it crawl (expand). Also, dandelion chain necklaces??
OMG Straw worms! We did those on the other side of the world in India too!
I thought the S was for state (Michigan State U)–grew up in that part of MI where you were either MSU or MI. What a rorschach inkblot test!
I thought the US national anthem ending in “home of the braves” was weird since they were my hometown baseball team. I thought it might have had something to do with TV ads calling them “America’s team.”
What!? No mention of Pinners, Ghosts in the Graveyard or doing the raised closed fist and pulling down motion while passing truckers on the highway to get them to honk their horn. 70s kid from Chicago.
Another 70s kid from Chicago here! I remember ghosts in the graveyard and the trucker thing. What is pinners? I must know. :)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinners
More and more of these are coming back to me, but I also remember sticking my tongue out, holding the tip with my fingers and being asked to say “I was born on a pirate ship”
I think it was called cats in the cradle? You take yarn and intertwine it and make cool designs out of it. Also handclap games!!
Gah this post makes me swell with even more love for kids. I taught my 6 yo daughter “crack an egg on your head” the other night at bedtime, and she got so excited she immediately fled the bedroom and did it to her dad and sister. It was so cute to see her excitement at this.
My kids elementary school was built in the 1920s so nothing about it is new and many things have been changed over the years. The stair treads in the school mostly match but a few are different (lighter color of rubber with a different tread pattern) and are “cursed steps” and they are pristine because the lore of the cursed steps is passed down from child to child. Watching the kids climb the stairs at their open house is hilarious, they all skip the cursed steps, even older siblings in middle school and high school because it’s hard to unlearn childhood lore.
Painting your fingernails with whiteout? I feel like white out is probably extinct now, so not passed on. I can still remember the sensation of scraping it off, oof!!
Kids used to sniff itso it was banned at my school
Oooh! We put Elmer’s in the divot that runs down the middle of a plastic ruler. Then, when it dried, it would turn clear and then we’d cut them out and glue them (more Elmer’s) to our fingernails to make fake fingernails.
The PEN 15 Club! Are you a member of the PEN 15 Club?!
Oh my goodness… I initiated my 54 year old friend into the PEN 15 club this year and she CACKLED because it was SO unlike me to do and she had never heard of it.
HAHAHA yes!
You know those clapping games that you play to decide who will be “it” in a game? Anyone else remember “my mother and your mother were hanging out clothes / my mother punched your mother right square in the nose / what colour was the blood” then someone picked a colour and you spelled out the colour and whereever you landed on the last letter, that person was “out”.
Forgot about this one!!! Hahah
Did anyone do the one where when you got a paper wrapped straw at a restaurant or whatever you’d take the paper off the straw and smooth and flatten it out and then tie it in a loose knot that you’d then pull all the way through and if the knot came undone THEN you’d tear up the straw wrapper into little pieces, shake them up in your closed hands, then spill them on the table? And they’d spell out the initials of the person who had a crush on you?? Anyone? Was this a weird upstate NY thing?
All it was for me in MI was that you’d tie the straw wrapper in a knot and then pull the ends apart until the wrapper broke. If the knot remained tied, too bad. But if the knot broke open, then someone was thinking of you at that moment! To get the initials of the person you would marry, you had to twist the stem off an apple, each circle you twisted was a letter of the alphabet, so you’d twist “A” twist “B” twist “C” etc. until the stem broke off, and that was their first initial. Last initial was how many taps it took to break your teeth through the apple skin. It was much too easy to control the last initial though!
Shot gun!!! To determine who gets the front seat. Then all the add on rules like have to be in eyesight of the car. Funny how fondly I look back at that experience when it caused so much distress in the moment.
This is an amazing analysis of all the different lyrics people remember learning as kids for “jingle bells, Batman smells…”and how they change depending on where you grew up in the world! The UK version is totally different from what US kids sing :) https://loreandordure.com/2025/12/16/jingle-bells/
My 8yo son dreads the “pinch and a punch for the first of the month” – still going strong!
I’m currently breastfeeding, and used the Mamava app to look up the location of a lactation privacy pod while on an outing with my family and baby. The password to access it? 8008. I cackled
Haha— that’s amazing!
Hahahahaha.
Omg whoever set up that password 😂
I have four boys and am stuck in the world of “Guess what?” “Chicken butt.” Hasn’t this been going on forever? Guess why/chicken thigh, Guess who/chicken poo etc.
hahaha
I loooooved making fortune tellers and was thrilled to teach that “skill” to my child. Does anyone in the States remember folding up a one dollar bill just so, so that George Washington’s head turned into a mushroom cloud? Also, as far as those hand clapping songs go, did anyone learn one that was made up entirely of nonsense words? The one my friends and I did went: Bo Bo, See Otten Totten, Nay Nay. I am boom boom boom. Itty-bitty otten totten. Bo Bo, See otten totten. Bo Bo, see otten totten BOOM. Anyone? Bueller?
Yes! But I knew it as Bo Bo skee wotten totten Eh eh, eh eh Boom boom boom Itty bitty wotten totten Bo Bo skee wotten totten Bo Bo skee wotten totten FREEZE! American cheese, please don’t show your _____ (eyes, nose, ears etc) to me Then you do the whole hand game again covering that body part
I remember playing that hand clapping game in a big circle on the playground!
yes to fortune tellers and bobo see otten totten!!!
Yes! Kinda! Bobo, see otten totten. Ah ah, see otten totten! Itty bitty otten totten, ah ah, see otten totten, boom! My friend moved to our teeny Northern California town from San Jose and taught us that one, real big city stuff.
Ahhh! I’m so happy to hear this clapping song is part of child lore for others! How interesting to hear that the lyrics were similar but slightly different. So many adults I’ve asks about this song have idea what I’m talking about!
*no idea!*
Around 1969 I was in 3rd or 4th grade in suburban Northern California. I think a new kid came to school because suddenly a new clapping game came around. Call-and -response. “Vista! Kumela kumela kumela vista! Na nana na na na vista! Eeniemeenie essameenie oh men a walla- meenie! Eet biddly oten-doten na na na deeten- doten! Vista!” “Vista”