What nursery rhymes and playground songs were popular when you were very young?
What nursery rhymes and playground songs were popular when you were very young?
Saßen zwei Gestalten
auf dem Donnerbalken
und sie schrien
nach Klopapier
Klopapier …
Und dann kam der Dritte
Setzt sich in die Mitte
Und sie schrien
nach Klopapier
Klopapier … (this continues counting till ten. It’s about an old fashioned wooden many-seated outhouse without toiletpaper which breaks down in the end. It’s one of two songs about poop my dad taught us, which briefly made my brother and me the rockstars of the playground. Poop!)
Skibidi dab dab dee yes yes
Skibidi dab dab dee dee
Ah. You're from the post-Simpsons generation. Prior to the Simpsons writers popularising the egg line, the most common version had "Robin flew away".
Where I am, the next lines usually had Batman losing his underpants in a location that rhymed with "(a)way", most often a motorway.

Ring around the Rosie Pocket full of posies Ashes ashes We all fall down!
Tic-Tac-Toe 3-in-a-row Barney got shot by a GI Joe Called the doctor, the doctor said Whoop! Barney’s dead
Jingle bells Jingle bells, Santa Claus is dead // GI Joe the Eskimo shot him in the head.
Row row row your boat, gently down the stream // Throw your teacher overboard and listen to her scream.
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the burning of the school // We have tortured every teacher and we’ve broken every rule.
Chinese, Japanese, Dirty knees, Look at these.
This one was a clapping game rhyme.
Miss Mary Mac Mac Mac All dressed in black black black With silver buttons buttons buttons All down her back back back
There was more, something about her house and pushing someone down stairs I think but I can’t remember.
I remember seeing girls doing so many of those. That was a big one. There was another one where, it worked into the clapping game choreography, every line ended with “Bisquick” and at that point you’d reach up and brush your shoulders.
Basically from birth until adulthood when your life ends and your job begins, the girls around me were constantly sharing stuff like that between them. Over a couple decades it smoothly transitioned from pattycake to line dances to club dances. Double Dutch was in there, somewhere.
Hello operator, give me number 9,
And if you disconnect me, I think I’ll lose my..
Ok so I couldn’t get this out of my head and looked it up and it turns out the ’official’ rhyme has it’s own wikipedia page, but it’s nothing like how I remember it? The official version is full of hippos and elephants and shit and she’s a kid, it’s really weird.
In the version I did at school, Mary Mac was an old lady and she lived in an old house, and I think it was her mother she pushed down the stairs?
This little snippet came back to me while I was doing the dishes- ‘down the stairs, stairs stairs’ and then something something ‘crack, crack, crack, she broke her back, back, back’.
Man I wish I could remember it all, this would have been a fascinating addition to the folklore to record somewhere.
🎵I hate you,
You hate me,
We’re a fucked up family🎵
Was definitely popular on the playground when I was a kid.
As was “diarrhea, chachacha”
Un elefante, brinco le daba, a una tela de araña.
Y cuando vio, que sostenía, vino brincar otro elefante,
Dos elefantes…
Huh, that one was different for me, it was:
Un elefante, se columpiaba(n), sobre la tela de una araña Como veía, que resistía, fue(ron) a llamar a otro elefante Dos elefantes…
Probably changes based on where. I grew up partially in El Salvador.
We also had the CriCri(?) nursery rhymes, and another one I vaguely remember that went something like
Allá en la puente, había un chorrito,
Se hacía grande, de hacía chiquito
But I forgot the rest of the lyrics at the moment
Relax, don’t do it
Pick your nose and chew it