Talkin' 'Bout My Generation

 

We little kids of the early seventies were an odd group. Not the tightly-controlled regimented kids of the previous generation that were made to wear patent leather shoes and slicked down cropped haircuts, we were allowed to let loose a little. One of the simple pleasures I remember was the schoolyard ditties we'd gather to sing. I'm pretty sure we were the first generation to readily know and be allowed to belt out pop hits as a group on the fly.

I woke up this morning and this tune was stuck in my head:

"Put the lime in the coconut and drink it all up."

At first I wasn't sure where it was from. Was it an oldies proto-funk tune my dad used to play or was it that Jamaican-looking dude from the old 7-Up commercials? Then I remembered...

Back in the day, us kids gathered in the schoolyard of Citizen's Elementary at recess and would occasionally take a break from bullying "fags" like me and actually find an ersatz comradery. One of us would invariable have smuggled a transistor radio, a newfangled thing at the time, into school and pulled it out of their bookbag (kids didn't use backpacks yet). I mean, we had more freedom than the kids of the previous generation, but some of the teachers weren't exactly too keen on us playing music on our own "disruptively." 

This tune was a popular hit back in '72. I was in, what?... third grade? Oh, that was the Mrs. Powell/Ms. Flower Child year wasn't it? Did I do a FLASHBACK on that? If I did, here it is. Anyway, I remember us grouping up and singing some of the sillier pop hits of the day back then during recess. "Jeremiah Was A Bullfrog" and "My Ding-A-Ling" were a few choice ones, but it's this "lime and coconut" one that became an earwig this morning. I think some of the "hipper" teachers even got in on the jam occasionally, like Ms. Flower Child, I'm sure. 

I wonder what nasty rap song the kiddos of today sing acapella as a group together in the playgrounds? Oh, they don't... they're all independently zoned out on their fucking phones of course, completely missing out on the essential early childhood developmental opportunity to bond with each other and come together in peace, love and harmony.

At least us impressionable kids of my generation had a grisly-lookin' dude in a bathrobe tokin' on a pot pipe to teach us how to grow up. "Wake n' bake, Man."