ME CHINESE, ME PLAY JOKE
ME CHINESE, ME PLAY JOKE
The other day I was cleaning out my shed and the overpowering stench of squirrel piss inside made me remember the classic schoolyard rhyme, "Me Chinese, Me Play Joke, Me Put Pee Pee in Your Coke!" I thought about it a lot, and couldn't help but laugh out loud at how totally insane it is. I was in a Navy family and went to no less than 10 different schools growing up, and had heard the Chinese Pee Pee rhyme in several of them.
It's remarkable enough that someone actually sat down to come up with that rhyme. Makes you wonder what sort of trial and error with shitting in 7-Up, spitting in milk, or ejaculating into Yoo Hoo, they went through before they settled on the classic we know and love today. What's even more amazing is how this thing spread across the country before the age of the internet.
There's something eerie about the mysterious schoolyard communication network that let's these things travel like wildfire across the country. You could move from California to West Virginia (poor thing), and hear much the same taunts.
I tried to research the origin of the whole "Me Chinese Me Play Joke" rhyme, and found this story joke (on asianjoke.com of all places):
A black man walks into a liquor store and buys a coke. He drinks it and the Chinese clerk starts laughing. The black guy says, "Why are you laughing?" The Chinese man said, "Me Chinese, me play joke, me put pee pee in your coke." The black man said in response angrily, "Me Black man, me run fast, me gonna kick your fuckin' ass!"
The Chinese were the brunt of many such poetic jabs. Another infamous song involved pulling the sides of your eyes and singing "Chinese (slant up), Japanese (slant down), Dirty Knees (rub your knees), Look At These (pull your shirt out as if you have big boobies)." It was as inane as the Pee Pee joke, but it made legions of kids swear that you could tell the difference between Chinese and Japanese people by the angle of the eye slant. I was fooled by this for years until I realized that it was a big lie. The only difference between the two countries is one sends tanks after Godzilla, while the other sends tanks after student protesters.
Apparently, ridiculing Chinese people is nothing new. My grandma tells me that when a kid wet the bed at the 20s era Georgia orphanage that she was raised in, they had to put the piss-stained sheets on their head and sing some rhyme that started with "Ching Chong Chinaman, sitting on a fence, tried to make a dollar out of 15 cents."
Of course, there were rhymes at school that didn't involve racist Asian taunts. There were always the bodily function ones to pass the time. Perhaps the most popular was:
Though I was pretty sure I wasn't capable of making fudge and lemonade from crapping and pissing, it wasn't until my wife was pregnant for the first time that I put that whole milk thing to rest. I was hoping for something that would soak up the Crunchberries well.
Another universal gem was the famous "Diarrhea song". There's many different variations and lyrics, many of which were popularized in the Ron Howard classic, "Parenthood". Here's a few:
When you're climbing up the ladder
When you're walking down the hall
When you're sliding into first
When you're pants are full of foam
Perhaps, "The Diarrhea Song" endears into adulthood because after years of excessive drinking and eating like shit, it's one of the only childhood rhymes that stays true.
Got any more childhood rhymes of this nature? More verses to "The Diarrhea Song"? Mail them to me at the address below and we'll collect them here soon!
In the meantime, when your can of refreshing Coke tastes a bit saltier than normal, be very afraid.