Miss Mary

Here is another modern classic from Jane. I'm sorry, but I did not get the clapping instructions for it.

Miss Mary and her boyfriend are kissing in the D - A - R - K

Dark is like a movie A movie’s like a show A show is like a TV show That’s really all I know

I know I know my ma I know I know my pa I know I know my sister with the eighty-metre bra!

I saw her in the ocean I saw her in the sea I saw her in the washroom Oops, oh pardon me!

My mom’s Godzilla My dad’s King Kong and my brother is the weirdo who made up this silly song

While I imagine scholars of many discplines could write volumes on the significance of the "eighty-metre" bra size, I'm struck by the fact that this one starts out with "Miss Mary". I don't recall a Miss Mary kissing her boyfriend in the dark from my youth, but I do recall one who went to heaven while her steamboat went somewhere else.

Jane knows about this Miss Mary also. However, she is not clear on what happens after she threatens to kick the operator who might not connect her to #9.

Could it be because the reference to a piece of glass behind the iron curtain is too obscure? Probably not, because even forty years ago nobody asked an operator to connect them to #9.

Heck. I've just gone looking on the web for a definitive version of the Steamboat rhyme and I see there are many variations, so that I'll have to type out the version I remember from the late 1960s playground of Gladstone Public School in Cornwall, Ontario:

Mary had a steamboat her steamboat had a bell Mary went to Heaven Her steamboat went to...

Hello operator, please give me number nine and if you disconnect me I'll kick you in the...

Behind the iron curtain there is a piece of glass Mary sat upon it and hurt her little...

Ask me no more questions and I'll tell you no more lies Policemen in the corner Pulling up their...

Flies are a nuisance Mosquitos even worse And that is the end of my silly little verse.