Fun with Words

My son is 10; on a recent subway trip something got me remembering (and reciting) an old goofy rhyme my dad used to say, to my son's delight.

It goes:

One bright stormy day in the middle of the night, 

two dead boys got up to fight.

Back to back, they faced each other,

drew their swords and shot each other.

A faraway policeman saw this noise,

came and killed those two dead boys.

And if you don't believe this lie, 

go ask the blind man--he saw it too.

It was fun to listen to him saying, "how could he kill those dead boys, if they're already dead?" "how can they shoot each other with their swords" "the blind man couldn't see anything!"

I found a version of this one (probably the unadulterated-by-my-dad-and-my-memory version) via google: "One Fine Day" research from The British Columbia Folklore Society

My dad had a ton of these, which amused us all no end as kids. Obviously--I'm over 45, and I'm *still* reciting them. I'll post some of the others later.

What's your favorite word nonsense?

even more on "you can't pronounce spelling"

My DD, Grace, is 14--well, not just yet, but for some reason in the past few years, I keep rounding up with her. She's in 8th grade.

She read part of the Odyssey in her text book. And last night she said, "Do you know what Odysseus told the Cyclops his name was?"

"Nobody," I answered.

"Yeah," she said, "only he spelled it n o h b o h and then a capital D." (or something like that, she started spelling out each letter) "And the Cyclops was so stupid he didn't realize..."

"Wait," I said. "In the first place, you can't hear spelling, so when Odysseus said his name, he wouldn't have been able to say it so it sounded spelled that way. And in the second place, well, the story was written in Greek! And in the third place, the Cyclops was REALLY stupid, because he heard 'nobody' and thought it was a name, not a word!"

Oh.

I need to dig out her textbook and see what it really said; I'll update later.