The Sicker You Get

When walking someplace that's just a little too far or waiting for a bus that almost refuses to come, I find I am a maker-upper of songs. Chants, really.

They often contain multi-syllabic versions of words like cold and home, as in "I hope I'll soon be ho-ome" or "Why is it so co-o-old?"

I guess the primitive rhythms insinuated themselves into my consciousness when I was very young, perhaps in kindergarten, when my classmates and I would practically will the bus to arrive with our chant, "The Bus, The Bus, The B-U-S."

In later years, our tribal exhortations continued during the ride itself, as we sang, "Hey, Bus Dri-ver, Speed Up a Lit-tle Bit, Speed Up a Lit-tle Bit, Speed Up a Lit-tle Bit; Hey, Bus Dri-ver, Speed Up a Lit-tle Bit . . . "

And then, of course, came the jungle admonition that greeted the arrival of a certain ice cream truck:
"Bungalow Bar, Tastes Like Tar; The More You Eat It, The Sicker You Are."

Said purveyor of frozen delights pretty much vanished while I was small. (Reasons contained in lyrics of "song"?) However, the chant remained in the Brooklyn consciousness for years to come. And since poetic logic is wasted on the old, sometimes it would emerge with subtle changes. For instance, I was taught the refrain by a playmate who saw nothing amiss in the lyric, "Bungalow Bar, Tastes Like Tar; The More You Eat It, The Sicker You Get." (To be honest, his "rhyme" was alright with me, too.)

On the other hand, some of the songs the kids I knew sang had traveled to us from across the decades, seemingly intact, despite anachronisms and irrelevancies that should have long ago consigned them to the dustbin of kid-song history.

I surmise it was the historical import and strong feelings generated by the individuals cited which preserved this ditty beyond its "best by" date: "Whistle while you work. Hitler is a jerk; Mussolini bit his peenie, now it doesn't work." (One kid I knew -- not, I believe, related to the Bungalow Bar bungler -- thought the final words were "now it doesn't squirt." There's always one.)

That song served as a kind of an onramp to history for me. It was, for instance, where I first heard of Il Duce (MuZZolini in this iteration) and it spurred me to ask who he was. (Every generation knows Hitler.)

Then, as I was introduced to some of the more complex pieces in the pre-adolescent repertoire, I learned even more. I mean, what child could walk away from the following and not feel he had grown?


"Walkin' down Canal Street, knockin' every door --
God damn, son of a bitch, I gotta find a whore.

Finally found a whore, she was tall and thin --
God damn, son of a bitch, I couldn't get it in.

Finally, got it in, moved it all about --
God damn, son of a bitch, I couldn't get it out.

Finally got it out, it was soft and sore --
The moral of the story is, to never fuck a whore."


Ah, sweet, golden-tinged memories of youth.

I wasn't sure what a whore was, of course. Yet as jokes moved into my life, augmenting the songs, the oldest profession taught me about alternate pronunciation and dialect via the following "knock knock" (to be delivered in an "Italian accent"):


"Knocka Knocka.

Who's-a there-a?

Me-a.

Me a hua"


That's the punchline -- "Me a hua." (Not sure of the spelling but pronounced hoo-a.)

"I'm a whore." ("Mommy. What's a hua?")

Yes, it's these songs and jokes that form the foundation of my outlook.

I mean, hey. -- now, I'm a whore of sorts, telling jokes in exchange for money (sometimes).

And today, when I was waiting impatiently for the bus, I chanted to myself out loud, "Where are you no-ow; where are you no-ow?" (Or something like that.)

You know what?

After awhile, came the B-U-S.

__________________________________

I'm actually walking around without any money. I still have almost all of the $12 I mentioned the other day but it isn't liquid. A couple of bucks are on a Kinko's card; 7 are inaccessible 'til I get my newest replacement debit card, which is probably sitting in my friend's mailbox. And I do have some English coins and a few old coins I found in my change and kinda wanna keep.

But my friend is makin' us steaks broiled in a cast iron pan tonight -- a method I found in a New York Times article yesterday. So, I have a bright future ahead of me, as long as it's measured in hours.


There's a twitchy bum siting on the interior window ledge essentially next to my table here at Starbucks. He's reading a worn, old paperback and dusting stuff off his legs that I can't see but it's being dusted in my direction, so I don't like it on spec.


Am Asian guy moved away from an old bum on the train this morning and the bum followed him and began bowing to him and another non-occidental in the manner of the East.


This twitchy loon is really upsetting me. I gotta go.


originally posted 2/1/07