For those of you who do not know
I have a sparse financial pool,
And so to make some extra bucks
I teach chess at the local school.
Now, names are hard to memorize
So sometimes we play games
To have fun, but mostly to
Help master all the names.
One such game is but a song,
Wherein the person pitched
Is sung to in a pattern
In which some letters get switched:
“Jamie jamie bo bamie,
“Bannana-fanna fo famie,
Me, my, mo mamie,
“Jamie.”
Yes, it is a silly game
But it does its job.
The problem is that you don’t want
To make the children sob
So every single child
Gets their own letter-swapping chorus
To help us learn their names
Before they play chess and ignore us.
In the old days all the Jamies,
Davids, Duncans, Kyles, and Joes
Could sing this song as easily
As “Head, shoulders, knees and toes.”
But now all the La’shamquas,
Chimeras, Flexktons, and Ka’drames
Don’t work as well with this song
(And the Aidan/Caden/Jaydensall sound the same).
Still the worst name ever
That I’ve applied this method too
Was a little boy named Tucker
Who didn’t want to go boo-hoo
So a class of twenty children
Sang “bannana-fanna fo…”
Then sang the next line to the principal
Who then told me I had to go.
So that’s why I am hustling
With my chess board in the park.
Sometimes you end up a hero.
Sometimes Tucker makes you a shark.
The Daily Travesty 