Doin' the Double-Dutch
All week long the radio has been talking about the sighting of the first robin of spring. Big deal, I saw a robin back in February. Long dead and frozen to the ground. Didn't mean it was spring.
With the temperatures in the 80s this week, it certainly felt like spring. But I don't need a calender or the sight of a robin to tell me when it is officially spring-time. It's the sight of little girls skipping. Not that feminine version of running that Judy Garland does so well as she heads down the Yellow Brick Road headed towards OZ - but the kind that involves skipping ropes held by someone at either end and someone jumping up and down in the middle.
I saw four of the little darlings down the street doing it on Tuesday so I ran over, shoved the skipping girl out from between the ropes, started jumping double-dutch and taught them a new skipping song - My mother/And your mother/Were hanging up the clothes/My mother punched your mother/Right in the nose.
Well, of course they were all delighted to hear that and asked for another one. Okay - Hello operator/Get me number nine/If you don't connect my party/I'll kick you in the /Hello operator ...
Ah kids.
You know, I happened to be at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremonies a few weeks ago (Patti Smith invited me as her guest if you really must know,) and everyone was going on about how Grandmaster Flash was the original rapper. Because he was also being inducted and I guess we always want to have someone to blame. Anyways, what a load of crap. Anyone who knows anything about rap music knows that it wasn't born in the black inner-city ghetto neighbourhoods of New York in the 1980s, but rather by little girls - both black and white - on the sidewalks of the suburbs of Jersey in the late 1950s and early 60s.
Seeing those girls down the street the other day only confirmed it for me. Mind you, their raps weren't as good as the ones from when I was a kid. In fact, they mostly sounded like nine-year-olds chanting Gwen Stefani songs.
Sadly, kids today have lost a lot of their heritage when it comes to proper skipping accompaniment. And to help rectify this situation, I left them with a popular long-lost skipping rap from my own childhood - Everybody's doin' it, doin' it, doin' it/Pickin' their nose and chewin' it, chewin' it, chewin it' ...
That's when they asked me to leave.
With the temperatures in the 80s this week, it certainly felt like spring. But I don't need a calender or the sight of a robin to tell me when it is officially spring-time. It's the sight of little girls skipping. Not that feminine version of running that Judy Garland does so well as she heads down the Yellow Brick Road headed towards OZ - but the kind that involves skipping ropes held by someone at either end and someone jumping up and down in the middle.
I saw four of the little darlings down the street doing it on Tuesday so I ran over, shoved the skipping girl out from between the ropes, started jumping double-dutch and taught them a new skipping song - My mother/And your mother/Were hanging up the clothes/My mother punched your mother/Right in the nose.
Well, of course they were all delighted to hear that and asked for another one. Okay - Hello operator/Get me number nine/If you don't connect my party/I'll kick you in the /Hello operator ...
Ah kids.
You know, I happened to be at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremonies a few weeks ago (Patti Smith invited me as her guest if you really must know,) and everyone was going on about how Grandmaster Flash was the original rapper. Because he was also being inducted and I guess we always want to have someone to blame. Anyways, what a load of crap. Anyone who knows anything about rap music knows that it wasn't born in the black inner-city ghetto neighbourhoods of New York in the 1980s, but rather by little girls - both black and white - on the sidewalks of the suburbs of Jersey in the late 1950s and early 60s.
Seeing those girls down the street the other day only confirmed it for me. Mind you, their raps weren't as good as the ones from when I was a kid. In fact, they mostly sounded like nine-year-olds chanting Gwen Stefani songs.
Sadly, kids today have lost a lot of their heritage when it comes to proper skipping accompaniment. And to help rectify this situation, I left them with a popular long-lost skipping rap from my own childhood - Everybody's doin' it, doin' it, doin' it/Pickin' their nose and chewin' it, chewin' it, chewin it' ...
That's when they asked me to leave.
posted by Sonny Drysdale at 2:23 AM
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