CC photo by inazakira
I went into the office for about an hour and a half tonight. When I came back, my wife was writing busily at the kitchen table. “I’ve got a blog entry for you,” she said. This is rather momentous — she has very little interest in cyberculture. But here’s what she wrote. (Let this be a warning to other couples who start a family when they are both English Ph.D. students.)
It is dangerous to sing children’s songs at dinnertime.
Carolyn, at 20 months, satisfied with any song, happily repeats the last word of any line like a sweet echo. Peter, on the other hand…First I try “Found a Peanut,” but Peter asks too many theological questions (“Why did he kick the angel?”) so I say nevermind, here’s a better song, and sing “On Top of Spaghetti.”
CC photo by inazakira
On top of Spaghetti
All covered with cheese
I lost my poor meatball
When I had to sneeze.
It rolled off the table
And onto the floor
And then my poor meatball
Rolled out of the door.
It rolled off the front porch
And under a bush
And then my poor meatball
Was nothing but mush.Peter has been growing red in the face and teary-eyed. I stop singing. “Are you crying about that meatball?” I ask. He nods.
I try to explain that the song is supposed to amuse children, not to make them sad.
“I just can’t stop thinking and thinking about that poor meatball,” he says, tears rolling from his pinched, squinting eyes. “I’ve been thinking about it for an hour. Is an hour 60 minutes?”
“Yes.”
“For who would want to eat it when it’s mush under a bush?”
“Ants?” I suggest. “Or maybe a dog will find it.”
“And another thing… they should close the front door. Then the meatball would just bounce on it and roll back to him.”
“Good point.”
“Or maybe he should remember to cover his mouth when he sneezes.”
Peter seems to be regaining his composure, but a few minutes later, he bursts into full crying. I kiss his red face and try to think of other ways to soften his horror at the meatball’s hard fate. [Mushy fate. — DGJ] Maybe the boy was dawdling, and the meatball sat on his plate too long, and wouldn’t taste good anymore anyway. He doesn’t seem convinced. I encourage Peter to finish his pizza (he’s been dawdling for over an hour), because pizza is Italian food, just like meatballs & spaghetti, and the meatball might be glad he ate Italian food.
Finally I tell him we’ll write down how he feels and put it on the Internet, so that everyone knows it’s not a good song to sing. This is all that will console Peter, and help him feel he’s set things right.
“But you’ll never be able to distract me from that meatball.”
Indeed, a few minutes later, he again bursts into full crying, wailing, “Oh! If only that boy dived on the floor and saved the meatball!”
I put on The Wiggles to distract Peter, who still asks, “Are you writing yet?” while I try to clear the table. “You write down the words and put it on the Internet!”
As I write, he comments that it should have been a cancer cell, not a meatball.
“What would a cancer cell have been doing on top of spaghetti?” I ask.
He shrugs. “Probably putting germs on it.”
A little while later, he supplies the title (“The Meatball: Not a Funny Rhyme”) and composes the following song for parents to sing instead:
“Lucky Meatball”
There was a meatball all covered in cheese.
His father went to close the front door
And said if you sneeze, please sneeze at the floor.
The meatball was poked on a fork
The cheese fell onto the spaghetti
When the ball went up, it went into a mouth and got chewed by teeth.
The cheese was on the first noodle that the boy scooped up.
The meatball got digested into crumbs.
And the boy brushed his teeth.
He said his prayers and went to bed.Peter is in bed now while I am typing this. “The song about the meatball… do you think it’s funny?” he just called out.
“I don’t know,” I said. “What do you think?”
“I don’t think it’s funny,” he said, his voice trembling. “I think it’s sad. The meatball had nourishment for him.”
Here you go, Internet… make things right for a little boy.
Post was last modified on %s = human-readable time difference 2:32 pm
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Thanks for your comment, AmericasSwtHeart! I'm sure my son will be happy to know his efforts are helping children and metaballs everywhere. "Metaballs" ... that was a typo, but I like it.
My son and I were eating spaghetti tonight and I remembered the "meatball song" but I couldn't think up the words. So after dinner my son asked me if I had remembered them yet, which I hadn't, so I suggested we get online and do a search. After all, you find ANY-thing on the internet right? *lol* That is when I came across your site. I have to say, I could not stop laughing! OMG that was so funny. Its amazing how we analyze things as children that are so easily dismissed by adults. That was entirely too cute! In the version we used to sing the song it ended with the meatball rolling under the bush, into mush and then growing into a meatball tree with sauce too, but it also made me think of something else as a child that made me have to stop and laugh. I remember growing up watching The Flintstones. Then the first time I went bowling and I refused to put my fingers in the lil holes because I was terrified that I would get them stuck in there and go flying down the lane like Fred Flinstone. *lol* And you know, even sometimes as an adult when I go bowling, I still get that feeling of what if? *lol* Thank you for sharing your story and I hope that next time you eat spaghetti that someone closes the door...just in case! *LOL*
Nice to hear from you, Peter. What's the origin of your name? I'm of Polish descent -- my grandfather told me our family name used to be "Jez". But I've had German acquaintances pronounce it as if it rhymes with "Herz," (to English-speaking ears, "hairtz"), so I wondered if they were familiar with a variant of the name somehow.
Nice story! Greetings to my namesake!
All right, so I just found this entry and could not pass up an opportunity to share a memory. Honestly, I only know that song because I once heard it on a children's sing-a-long commercial selling songs on cassette tapes when I was younger. Most of my childhood consisted of listening to oldies music, watching TransFormers, and reading comic books (partial to Superman). How different things might be had I taken more interest in Music class...
Ah, Rosemary. I know you. You know me. I'm sitting on top of Dad's lap. And I'm Peter. I want to talk to you about the meatball song. It makes me cry, cause I wish the boy would have aten it instead of making it mush. It's all his fault for sneezing at it. His nose had a green targeting box. And it should have been blue. If it's blue, it's not pointing at what you're targeting. The second time Mom sang the song to me, I burst into tears. While Dad put "full crying", I really did burst into full crying when I heard the song. I got distracted by The Wiggles, and there were commercials blocking The Wiggles. The Wiggles' names are Anthony, Murray, Jeff, and Greg. Greg is the lead singer. All the rest of the Wiggles do not always sing the same words. I have three movies of The Wiggles. One of them sounded bad, so we had to get a new same one. I mean, it sounded better, and it was the same movie. Have you watched The Wiggles?
Julie Y, I think that one is kind of in the middle. For of the peanut and the meatball. The peanut song is about a boy who got a tummy ache, died, went to heaven, kicked an angel, and went the other way. The other way of heaven is hell. I really would love to go to heaven. Right now, I am only five and a half, and I'm a young boy. I'm sitting on my father's lap. This is January the 6th. If you were at my house, and looking out the window, you would see it's nighttime. And the year is 2004. The meatball story makes me cry when I hear it. I put a song that sounds better to me on the Internet. Actually, I told Daddy to put it on. If only you can find that on your computer, you might be able to read it to yourself. You can read it out loud, or you can read with your mind.
Susan, I felt different about the story of the meatball. I felt sad for the meatball. If only the boy could have sneezed before he got it on his meatball. Or if the front door was closed, it might not have rolled out. The second time of the night when Mom sang the song to me, I burst into tears. She didn't mean to make me cry. Still thinking about it, I got a little bit distracted from The Wiggles. And Mom tried to distract me. I knew what I meant. But didn't know what I was going to say. Instead of saying "meatball", I said "peanut". Then I said the right word, "meatball." Since of the boy who kicked an angel, he went to hell. Thrown out of heaven, and probably passed purgatory.
Yes, Will. Did you burst into full crying like I did? I am sure that meatball wouldn't have rolled out the door if the door was closed. And if only the boy sneezed at the floor. But there's something wrong with that too. What if someone slips in his snot. The meatball had nourishment for his muscles. What if he had any nourishment for his bones? Nourishment for muscles is called protein. Nourishment for bones is called calcium. I felt the same way about that meatball. If only the boy could have sneezed in a Kleenex it would have been better than sneezing at the floor.
Amanda, there is nothing wrong with living in a shoe. I'm not so sure if the rhyme in my book with the Guess and Show pen with invisible ink had different words of the lady in the shoe. And I was sure she did know what to do. But in the book, she doesn't know what to do.