A Case for Insanity

Do you ever get one of those tunes in your mind and can’t get it out.  I have one that through the years has come back to me often. It is called the “Clap Clap Song.”  Recently I started thinking about the words.

Three, six, nine.

The goose drank wine.

The monkey chewed tobacco on the street car line.

The line broke.

The monkey got choked.

And they all went to heave in a little row boat.

Okay, first what kind of a song is this for a child? A drunken goose and a tobacco chewing monkey not to mention extreme violence as the monkey gets choked. I have another question about who are the “all” in the little row boat. What I’m saying is no one knows what happened to the people on the runaway street car? Are they also in the row boat with the goose with the cirrhosis-ridden liver and the monkey who probably would have died anyway from cancer of the mouth?

And that’s not the end of the song.

My mommy told me, if I was goodie, that she would buy me a rubber dolly.

My auntie told her, I kissed a soldier, now she won’t buy me, that rubber dolly.

I ask, back in the day, didn’t parents teach their children about “Stranger Danger?” It may not have been called that, but really, a child young enough to play with dolls kissing someone who is old enough to be a soldier. Seems to me the nosey auntie is the hero of this story.

That is just one song. Think about the fairy tales like Little Red Riding Hood. Does she need glasses or something? Who would mistake a wolf for their grandmother? Unless the grandmother was an original Coyote Ugly.

Not to mention the violence in this story. This time far worse that the other. The wolf who was obviously never told to chew each bite twenty times, swallows Red whole. Then the Huntsman comes to the rescue and violently frees Red from the Wolf by gutting him. Yikes, imagine the bloody mess.

We find more strange behavior when instead of giving up his unwanted kids for adoption a father takes his kids into the woods and leaves them. Not that the kids, Hansel and Gretel are innocents by any means. They sneak up to a stranger’s home and start eating it.  Don’t get me started on a house made of gingerbread. The old woman might have regretted her decision during the rainy season.

The old woman has nefarious designs on these kids that goes beyond revenge for the bite marks on her siding. She plans to bake these kids in her oven. Evil woman! But these kids turn the tables and push her into the oven first. My word, who thinks of these things? I would be leery of any kids who develop a habit of turning on the oven.

Next, some people get disturbed about cohabitation. Yet, I wonder if they ever thought about Snow White. I mean the woman lived with seven dwarfs. Do you really think she was snow white?

Now with all these confusing messages, don’t you think it’s understandable that children who grew up with these tales may have some mental disorders as adults? At a minimum some kind of neurosis, at the worst maybe even psychotic tendencies.

So it is, I’m researching all of these old songs, nursery rhymes and stories, analyzing them, and cataloging them according to the behaviors they are demonstrating. I will keep this file just in case the time ever comes I find myself on trial for some crime. I’m not saying I’d commit a crime, but if I did, I feel these files will serve as evidence I couldn’t help myself by reason of insanity.

I will also be willing to share this evidence for any of my friends. There’s a few I’m pretty sure are ready to go over the deep end. Someday they’re going to need it. And a good lawyer. I can recommend one of them too.

You can find some of my novels and shorter stories here.