schoolyard_rhymes raze maybe someone sang one of these about you when you were a kid. the one i got went like this: john, john the leprechaun went to school with nothing on. the teacher said, "that's no fair. give him back his underwear." i always found it a little funny that anyone believed a scenario like that would be upsetting. so you show up in your birthday suit of your own volition and get a free pair of underoos out of the deal thanks to a sympathetic educator who mistakenly believes another student stole your clothes? sounds like a happy ending to me. 230709 ... epitome of incomprehensibility I don't know if the Valois_Park denizens ever had the idea to make up rhymes about specific people, but one of the clapping rhymes went like this: Stella ella ola clap clap clap (OR quack quack quack) Say yes, chico chico chico chico chat Say yes, chico chico valora, valora, valora, lora, lora Say one, two, three, four, five six, seven, eight, nine, ten The idea was to move your hand away if someone was trying to clap yours on "ten." Anyway, that was the version I sang (this one had a little tune, unlike some). As a young adult, I heard a version that replaced -"chat" with "chap" and -"valora" with "aloha" With that new info, my Literary Interpretation brain got going. Half-jokingly, I theorized that the song was about a new student who comes from another country and speaks Spanish, and the other kids are making fun of him for it. ("His" because "chico" is a way of saying "boy" in Spanish.) They taunt him by getting him to say words and to count to ten - presumably so they can hear his accent and laugh at it. And then they say "aloha" to him, not even bothering to get the language right. So, if my (somewhat depressing) theory is right, Stella Ella Ola could have originated as a sort of taunt. Or maybe it's just nonsense words strung together. I don't know. 230709 ... ovenbird My mom always did this one with me (accompanied by a hand clapping game) A sailor went to sea, sea, sea To see what he could see, see, see But all that he could see, see, see Was the bottom of the deep blue sea, sea, sea Reflecting now this feels incredibly dark. It's that "bottom of the sea" part that really turns everything. It was all sailing the ocean blue and looking out over the waves until all of a sudden he's at the bottom of the ocean. So my assessment is that the sailor drowns and I defintely did NOT get that part as a child. Children's rhymes are fascinating in this way. A lot of them have sinister cores. 250331 what's it to you? who go blather from