I saw a news item that mentioned the words “monkey meat” and suddenly, after more than 30 years this song that we used to sing in primary school came floating up out of the depths of my memory:
"Great big gobs of greasy, grimy gopher guts
Mutilated monkey meat,
Saturated chicken fat
Great big gobs of greasy, grimy gopher guts,
That’s what we eat at school!"
And then that reminded me of all the silly songs we used to sing as kids, like this one
“Comet
It tastes like gas-o-line,
Comet
It makes your face turn green
Comet
It makes you vomit
So eat some Comet
And vomit
Today!”
Or this well-known classic, sung to the Battle Hymn of the Republic (I’ve heard lots of different regional variations on this song, everyone has their own version):
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the burning of the school
we have tortured every teacher, we have broken every rule
We made a proclamation to the Board of Education
and that was the end of school
Glory, glory Hallelujah,
Teacher hit me with a ruler,
Shot her at the door with a loaded 44
and that was the end of school
[this was decades before Columbine, so you could sing stuff like that and nobody paid any attention].
So what other sing-on-the-bus ditties do you remember from your school days?
My cousin taught me his version at the bus stop years ago:
Great green globs of greasy, grimy gopher guts
Mutilated monkey meat,
Little dirty birdie feet
Great green globs of greasy, grimy gopher guts,
And I forgot my spoon"
He also knew one where part of the chorus was “suffocation, hyperventilation” and the verses featured various nasty acts. Great one for the songs, my cousin..
Years before that, when I started going to school in the town of Ronkonkoma in Long Island, I was taught this one:
From the shores of Lake Ronkonkoma to the walls of New York Bay
We will fight our teacher’s battles with spitballs and some clay.
We will fight for no more homework
and to keep our desks a mess,
We will gladly claim the title of our teachers’ Little Pests.
…it is to a well known tune but I can’t think of what the real one is called.
“Nobody likes me, everybody hates me,
I’m going to eat a worm!”
And that reminds me of this one that we sang whenever we thought a boy and girl might be interested in each other:
Glow little glow-worm, glimmer, glimmer
[insert name of girl you’re teasing]'s getting thinner, thinner.
Teeth are crooked and her hair is peroxyde,
in the moonlight, she looks cross-eyed
Bells on her petticoat swinging in the breezes
High above her bowlegged kneeses
All these things that people say
Can’t keep [name of boy you’re teasing] away!
Ah, I never liked the worms on the snout one. Was presented with it unexpectedly during a school special event at a particularly bad time in life. Still creeps me out. Though the other, worse ones don’t seem to bother me. And I liked to sing the eating worms one…used to know all the verses at one time.
Great green globs of greasy, grimey gopher guts,
Mutilated monkey meat, chopped up baby parakeet,
French-fried eyeballs floating in a pot of blood,
And I forgot my spoon. (I brought a straw.)
My grandma has tuberculosis,
She has one rotten lung,
She spits up blood and corruption,
And rolls it around on her tongue.
Save it! Save it! Save it for beans tonight, tonight!
Save it! Save it! Oh save it for beans tonight!
“This land is my land, this land’s not your land,
I’ve got a shotgun, and you ain’t got one!
You’d better get off, I’ll blow your head off!
This land was made for me alone!”
Everybody hates me, nobody loves me
Going down the garden to eat worms.
Long thin slimey ones, big fat fuzzy ones
Goooey gooey gooey gooey worms!
Long thin slimey ones slip down easily
Big fat fuzzy ones don’t
Big fat fuzzy ones stick in your teeth
and the juice goes SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSlllllllllllllllp
Down your throat!
The ultimate schoolboy/girl fantasy short of actually shooting the teacher is recording a song about it. Some of you might remember a late 50s hit by a schoolgirl group called the Bobettes called Mr. Lee. The hit version begins:
One, two, three, look at Mr. Lee
Three, four, five, look at him jive
Mr Lee, Mr Lee …
It was actually a sanitised version of the song they originally wrote which begins:
One, two, three, I shot Mr. Lee
Three, four, five, I got tired of his jive
Mr. Lee, Mr Lee etc …
Amazingly for the time, they later recorded and released the ‘shooting’ version for another label but it didn’t do so well.
we had a little chant after the song:
no more pencils,
no more books,
no more teacher’s dirty looks.
throw the pencils in the well,
tell the teachers “go to hell!”
then there’s the song we’d sing before going horseback riding:
Blood on the saddle
Blood on the ground
Great big puddles of blood all around
Pity the cowboy
Bloody and red
The old cow pony done (STOMP)
Stomped on his head.
