For no reason that I can figure, the song “Oh My Darling Clementine” has been an earworm in my brain for the last day or two. Especially this part:
Herring boxes, without topses
Sandals were for Clementine
As I remember, all the kids I played with while growing up knew this song. What interests me is how we all knew it; apparently, it first became something of a hit in 1941 when Bing Crosby sang it, but his version is not one I ever heard. Various other artists recorded it, but I don’t remember actually hearing it anywhere but the playground. It’s just a song that all of us seemed to learn by osmosis, like “Ring around the Rosie”.
We also all knew the tune “On Top of Old Smokey”, although we didn’t know the lyrics and sang it as “On Top of Mt. Baldy”, the highest mountain near us. Or course, later, we all learned the ‘proper’ lyrics to this tune as “On Top of Spaghetti”.
All of this got me to wondering how things like this spread amongst kids today. Is it easier or harder with cell phones and YouTube and TikTok? Is playing “Ring around the Rosie” still a thing? Do kids still worry about “Step on a crack, break your mother’s back”? How do these things get passed between generations and is it still happening?
These are the things I contemplate at night and then wonder why I can’t get to sleep!
Tuples and Attributes 