My cousin Cate jokes about Inappropriate Movie Night which she’s ended up at more than once, taking her young daughter along to a film that turned out to be…more adult than she had bargained for. Anders and I have accidentally had the same thing happen to us more than once ourselves, getting all excited about showing an old film for a Friday night family myskväll that we remember as being great (and that usually WAS great), but which turns out to be…more adult than we remembered. A Fish Called Wanda, for example, which both my kids still cite as a reminder of our poor taste in choosing family films.
The other day, I was singing the Suffocation Song out loud to myself. It was stuck in my head for some reason. Do you know this song? If I had gone to summer camp as a child I might be able to blame it on that, but since I only went to day camp a few times and the one I remember most vividly was in Europe (Mom, help me out here…where the heck did we go to day camp?), and I don’t think day camp counselors would be teaching their young charges The Suffocation Song, I doubt that’s where I got it from.
It’s just one of those silly songs that you absorb at some point during childhood. They usually have multiple variants of verses and this one is no exception based on a couple of minutes spent googling. The version I learned only has 2 verses (that I remember, anyway) and goes:
Suffocation, suffa-suffocation, suffocation, show you how to play
First you take a rubber hose, then you stick it up your nose
Leave it there, I don’t care, whoa oh oh oh!
Suffocation, suffa-suffocation, suffocaton, show you how to play
First you take a plastic bag, then you stick it on your head
Leave it there, I don’t care, whoa oh oh oh!
Etcetera. The tune is aggravatingly earwormy and I find myself humming it at odd moments and have, all my life. But when I sang it in front of my kids the first time, they both turned to me with shocked faces and said “WHAT?”
“What?!” I answered, disarmingly. “It’s a TEACHING SONG.” Don’t be sticking bags on your head, you young’uns!
I taught them all the words to Great Green Gobs of Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts too, when they were small. It has the delightfully naughty part about the devil “chewing on his underwear” that never failed to get a giggle. It’s another one that everyone seems to have learned different words & variants to. I’ve also repeatedly sung Jaws, a Mouth, a Great Big Mouth to the tune of Do, A Deer, A Female Deer that has satisfyingly gory bits and a dramatic ending:
Jaws – A mouth, a great big mouth!
Teeth – those things that kind of crunch!
Chomp – the way sharks say hello!
Us – his favorite quickie lunch!
Blood – which turns the ocean red
Gulp – which means a shark’s been fed
Splash – which makes a swimmer pause…
Which will bring us back to Jaws Jaws Jaws Jaws…(repeat endlessly)
There’s another inappropriate song I’ve sung around my kids, though it’s less of a song and more of a…rhyme. I don’t remember where I learned it either, though I think it was probably in junior high at some point. It seems about that level. It goes:
Regurgitate, regurgitate, throw up all the food you ate! VOMIT VOMIT barf, bleaaaaaaah!
Trust me when I say that you really don’t want to google “regurgitate song”…but I did find the particular version that I know listed as THE VOMIT CHEER. So maybe it was something we yelled at sporting events? Although, I’ve never been to any sort of eating contests, which would seem more appropriate.
Got any other inappropriate goodies in your childhood memory vault of silly songs?