dandelions

[kip_w]

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When Sarah sees a dandelion in our yard, she picks it. Then she holds it in her hands so that the flower sticks out toward me. "Momma had a baby," she chants, with her thumbs behind the blossom, "but the head POPPED OFF!" And on those words, she does her best to pop the flower off the stalk and at my face.

She says she learned this from Zach and Max.
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Comments

[angevin2.livejournal.com]

I find it heartwarming to hear that kids still do this.

I could never get the head to pop off either.

[meggins.livejournal.com]

And to think all I ever did was blow the seeds off. Does she know the buttercup trick? ("Do you like butter? You must. Your chin is yellow. Said while holding a buttercup under someone's chin.)

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

My kids did this when they were little, 20 and more years ago.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

It's interesting to me in that Sarah is very squeamish about violence on TV (slapstick excluded), but this seems to be at a level far enough removed from reality that she enjoys it. Though I suspect the thing she enjoys most is trying to hit me with the flower.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

I never notice buttercups around. When I was a kid, I think we did this with dandelions. I was pretty young — to me, it was one of those really serious things the older kids tell you.

[hawkida.livejournal.com]

Do you know the nursery rhymme "Miss Polly had a dolly"? Because in my childhood the first line of that was followed by the second line you mention, and it tended to be played with boys' sister's dolls, in the same fashion.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

Oho! Interesting. I've always been interested in children's rhymes and finger games and whatnot, and I'd never heard of this one before, or of any close relatives like this.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

Ooh, we never had proper buttercups. We had to use dandelions. Horrid nasty long-stemmed things nobody else wanted...

[meggins.livejournal.com]

Always a plentitude of buttercups here.

For some reason I sequed in my head to jump rope rhymes. I don't guess boys learned those. Was there a masculine equivalent? Sports rhymes or something?

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

I had three older sisters. I picked up jump rope rhymes.

I think boys, even at an age when they couldn't possibly do anything about it, would use more creativity for dirty jokes and whatnot. The older guys who rode my school bus when I was in the early grade school years were pretty inventive. I took mental notes. Yeah, offhand I'd say the received wisdom tended to be off-color. Not that I didn't learn that from my sisters as well.

[meggins.livejournal.com]

D'oh! Off color (and gross out) humor. I should have remembered that from my cousins (all male save one).