This is another post about the games and toys and things that I did as a kid that were seemingly forever lost to memory once I grew up.
It started yesterday a few weeks ago, when Rollie and I were getting mail. We live on a cul-de-sac, so there is not a lot of traffic and he was in the street with me at the mailbox when a car rounded the corner, and almost involuntarily, I yelled out, “CARRRRR!!!!!!” just as if I was back in front of Owen Kinney’s parents’ house playing ball. I had totally forgotten about the unspoken knowledge of “CARRRRR!!!” and it came back completely unbidden.
Then yesterday, we were picking up a new chair at Pier One, and the guys working the store gave each of the kids a Chinese Yo-Yo. Todd brought them out and I looked at them, and they looked familiar, but it was just one of the those items completely lost to memory. Then Rollie, with a flick of his wrist, brought it all back to me. It was a spiraling, papery, magic on a stick. I laughed out loud, right there in the car.
Then today, another one popped up: The kids are learning about sharing, but Rollie thinks that sharing is only something that Tiller has to do with him, and does not really get that the reverse is true also. So, after about five minutes of tears, throwing of cars, biting, and me refereeing, I decided it was time for learning about equal division of property. I pried them apart from one another, their chests heaving with the exertion of having tried to kill one another over a pile of one dollar Matchbox cars, then I took the cars, and i put them into the plastic bin they are stored in, and placed the bin between the two kid. Both reached immediately for a car.
“Uh-unh-unh,” I said. “Not so fast.”
They put their cars back in the bin and looked at me.
“Now, each of you put out a fist.”
Rollie got this, but Tiller put out two fists, grinning at me for praise. I put one of her fists back in her lap.
“Mama, what about the cars?” Rollie said.
I said, “Well, we’re going to divide them up evenly.”
Rollie looked at me like I was crazy.
“Ready?” I said.
“Eenie meenie, meiny mo,” I said, alternately bopping my fist on each of their fists, one after the other, in time to each syllable, “Catch a tiger by his toe, if he hollers, let’im go. Eenie meenie, meiny, mo.”
At that point, it was like I was in a trance, as the following poured forth: “My. Mother. Told. Me. To. Pick. The. Very. Best. One. And. You. Are. Not. It!”
The kids loved it.
Talk about magic. And it was like one of those magical parenting moments, too, because now all they want to do is figure out whose turn it is to pick first as they divide stuff up.
Yes, I am God’s gift to parenting.
On another note, as the words “Catch a tiger by his toe” came out of my mouth, I thought to my self, how would you do that? Why a Tiger?
Oh.
Doesn’t take a Southern girl long to figure out what her grandparents, and probably even her parents, said instead of “tiger” on their playground. And then I realized that this little ditty was probably a good deal older than me and my friends playing Hide and Seek in the front yard, so I Googled it.
If you want to know the history of the whole Eeny, meeny, miny, moe rhyme, you can find info here. Equally as creepy as kids singing the Ring Around the Rosy rhyme if it were actually a plague rhyme, which evidently is not the case.