I forget if I've mentioned it already but there is a song that Mamaw used to sing to us as kids, and I've started singing at school. I don't remember what exactly my reaction was back then when I was young but she would sing it all the time, and now at school here in Korea the kids go absolutely WILD.
It started with a boy named Kevin. Kevin... was a cryer. I mean the first two weeks of school it wouldn't have been 1st period, or lunch time without Kevin turning on the water works until some (female) teacher came a running to smother him with love and affection. Don't get me wrong, he's one of the smartest and most well behaved kids we have, he was just, you know, a cryer.
My strategy with cryers is always the same: ignore them completely and make all the kids around them have so much fun that they would quickly abandon being Pouty McPouterson to join in the festivities. With little exception it works like a charm. Which brings me to my two accomplices in the quest to cure Kevin's crying:
Whenever Kevin would start the tears during class I would just start to goof around and play with these two like there's not tomorrow. When there's only 5 kids in a class and the other two boys are having the grandest of times, it's only a matter of seconds before Kevin would sober up his sobs and join the wildin' out.
Back to my run-away-smash hit. So I discovered during my full-throttle-tour-de-fun-force with Shawn and Jason that if I sang this old song (limerick?) from Mamaw while clapping or slapping my knee, Shawn and Jason would literally drop everything and start running around in the biggest circle they could run in inside any given space shrieking and laughing. Soon everyone in class would do it and it got the energy in the room back up, and Kevin's cheeks dry.
The song goes a lil something like this (I'll use Kevin's name):
Kevin is a friend of mine
He resembles Frankenstein
When he does the Irish jig
He looks like Porky Pig
hahhah I know they lyrics are insane and not so flattering but it works because I can sing it really fast, and can insert any of the kid's names in there and that makes them feel like I'm singing about them and they think it's hilarious.
It's been almost a month (!) so far in the year and I sing it all the time, never really thinking about it more than to get the kids all riled up, until last week when that smart cookie Kevin started running in the teacher's room and yelling "Jason is a friend of mine!" and the running back out. The other kids noticed how funny us teachers thought that was and so a few more started doing it and during snack time or lunch time I would sing it for the other classes and they would go wild.
It's also funny (maybe a blessing?) that the first line is the only line they known how to say in English, after that they just start to jumble gibberish syllables paired with giggles. If a kid here ever look at me and said the statement "Shawn resembles Frankenstein" I'd probably break a rib or two laughing.
Flash forward to today, when late in the afternoon after one of my more strenuous, perspiration-instigating classes two of the desk teachers approached me and said, "Some parents called about your music in class." I thought 'oh great that's just dandy, some of the kids complained I was a bad music teacher'. BUT NOPE. Apparently kids in multiple homerooms had gone home and brought up and or constantly sang the song so the parents thought it was an actual educational song! The desk teachers said that the parents wanted to know what it was, where I got it from, and if I could write down the lyrics so that they could sing along with (the hottest jam this side of the Han River) their kids!
Hahah outlandish right? Due to the (ridiculous and impossible to explain) lyrics I told the desk teachers it was something my grandmother used to sing to me and then kind of changed the subject and laughed it off but the they seemed pretty serious so hopefully I can dodge that chore/explanation and keep it all to myself!
So a big thanks to Mamaw, for passing down that gem! Look for my version on iTunes or wherever you witness kids laughing and running around in circles.
when mom told me to read your blog because you talked about a song Mamaw taught us, I was like "what?"...and now I TOTALLY remember that little ditty-- thanks for bringing that memory back to me!
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