Kalico 2: Hypnotized & Naked in Hope Springs

Kalico: An Awkward Interruption

Kalico: with Wallflower, Thursday morning, Johnson Road

(both still naked)

There's a bend on Johnson Road ahead of us but who notices that sort of thing when you're having fun?

Folk Songs

Wallflower and I were singing rather loudly:

Rabbit ain't got no tail at all! Tail at all! Tail at all! Rabbit ain't got no tail at all! Just a powder puff!

Same Song! Forty-Third Verse! Could get better!But it's gonna get worse!

Rabbit ain't got no tail at all, tail at all, tail at all, rabbit ain't got no tail at all, just a powder puff ...

And so forth. The song continues for as long as the singers can stand it.

Wallflower and I had been singing folk songs. Well, we can at least claim it's a folk song. Maybe a Marching Song? Our excessive noise just about did us in. True country kids, with savvy for the wild woods, or at least with an understanding of open fields, would not have let anything sneak up on them so easily as the way this all happened.

"How many verses does this song have?" Flower interrupted our singing to ask. She was hanging onto my left elbow in a spirit of camaraderie, but for general principles I was not allowing her to touch the handle of the wagon. I was still claiming the little garden wagon as mine to pull – all the way to the school.

It was as if I had missed an important element of my childhood. The wagon didn't exactly replace whatever was missing, but it gave me great satisfaction to pull it. I decided I would gladly share the task with Flower on another day, but today I sincerely needed to pull the wagon.

"It depends on your math skills," I told her about her question about the verses. "How many numbers do you know? Higher Mathematics means knowing numbers greater than around a thousand, doesn't it? Do you want to sing that many verses? Maybe you are ready to sing something else?"

For the last several minutes Flower and I had been singing some silly repetition songs. We started with Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer On the Wall, but soon dropped that ditty because of its limited number of verses. Here's an example:

Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer On the Wall! Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer!

You Take one Down! And Pass it Around! Ninety-Eight Bottles of Beer On the Wall!

As anyone remotely skilled at math can quickly see, we would run out of bottles of beer on the wall long before we finished our two mile hike. Well, all right, maybe running out of verses for that song might be a good idea.

We had also tried Waltz Me Around Again, Nellie, but neither of us knew all the words. Probably that is just as well. It ranks right up there with Rabbit Ain't Got No Tail as a culture-wrecking event.

All we could remember of this latter song was:

Aye, Yaie, Yaie-Yaie! In China They Never Eat Chillie! I know another verse That's worse than the other verse! So, Waltz Me Around Again, Nellie!

After Wallflower's earlier remark about an ethics committee, neither of us felt it was proper to sing about knowing another verse that's worse than the other verse, when, in fact we didn't know anything remotely as bad as that first verse.

Flower and I are both highly ethical, if nothing else. Therefore, it was our ethical considerations which spared the countryside from our voices singing more about Nellie.

Our singing reflected our lighter mood as we made our way. My outlook had brightened considerably, especially compared with how I felt around the time Flower had dropped back behind me to allow me seemingly to walk alone.