Stories no longer talk about children going to out play in the rain, wearing their slickers and rubbers and rain hoods.
Every time I talk about hoeing, or needing to find another hoe, Andrew giggles.
"Gay" means something altogether different from what it used to mean.
Does anybody still play "Where is thumbkin?" with little kids? I suspect with people flipping the bird to others at the slightest provocation, some folks do not want to teach preschoolers the finger-play that has a verse "Where is middle-finger? Where is middle-finger? Here I am! Here I am! How are you today, sir? Very well, I thank you. Run and hide; run and hide."
I learned a counting song when I was little and decades later taught it to some of my kids. "One little, two little, three little Indians..." I betcha that's considered politically incorrect too.
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The not playing in the rain makes me feel so bad for kids. The little miss and I will be out splashing in puddles and getting soaked, and I'll see squashed up noses and longing eyes from many a window.
ReplyDeleteI still play "where is thumbkin", and the The Wiggles still teach it (though I haven't heard it anywhere but from them).
And it's "one little, two little, three little babies..." now-a-days
Children who do (or do not ... ah, sadness) go out to play in the rain wear boots nowadays.
ReplyDeleteDo the Wiggles just do thumbkin, or do they do all five fingers?
"Babies" works.
Isn't it "Where's Mr. Tall Man"?
ReplyDeleteMom, that's probably what it is. But when I was trying to remember it, I used thumbkin, pointer, middle-finger, ring-finger, and pinky. Didn't realize my forgetfulness set in SO long ago already.
ReplyDeleteThe Wiggles do all five fingers.
ReplyDeletePeople don't just keep their kids from going out in the rain, even if they won't even look wet when they come in if there is precipitation it's no good.
At the school if I felt five or six drops over the course of a few minutes recess was always canceled.
It makes me think I might get in trouble if I was a babysitter :-)
Some people want kids to live real lives and have common sense about such things. (At least, I think they do. But maybe those kinds of parents aren't sending their kids to a babysitter ....)
ReplyDeleteI was told, a few years ago and in NO uncertain terms, by a public school teacher that I should NOT teach my child "Eenie, meenie, miney, mo" because even if I was saying "catch a TIGER by the toe," the song USED TO use another word, one beginning with "n" in place of "tiger" Therefore the song was racist as it stands now, even though it says "tiger" in it.
ReplyDeleteYou know what, Mrs. Public School teacher? It was so long ago that anyone sang that with a racist slur in it that I, age 28 at the time, had had no clue whatsoever that the n-word had once been used instead of "Tiger."
::rolls eyes::