The data storage problem is almost solved. If you were born after, say, 1960, you will see a day on which the entire sum of human knowledge will fit on something portable and inexpensive. We’re mostly there now, actually. The next challenge is doing it inexpensively with no moving parts, and we’re way up that curve too.
As good as we’ve gotten at recording information, the other day I considered that we employ some centuries-old methods to pass it along as well. Some of our most old-fashioned oral historians are our children.
At some decision point or another recently, Nathan deployed “eeny meeny miny moe.” Tonight he wanted to show me a “new” game called Mercy. Last week he was singing some hilarious “new” lyrics to a familiar song: “Jingle Bells, Batman smells, Robin laid an egg…” It always throws him when 
Daddy already knows his “new” game or song. I think that with such moments, he’s realizing that Daddy really was a little boy once. It’s fun to watch him stop and think about it.
And so this stuff trickles, from year to year and grade to grade. I’m amazed at how purely it is transmitted. Nathan reproduces exactly what I said and did 30 years ago. Wouldn’t you think it would get screwed up? I mean, I know little variations creep in, but they do so far more slowly than I would guess. I expect that if a little girl lived at my house, I’d be hearing “Cross, down, when Billy Boy was one, he learned to suck his thumb…”
Makes me want to grab a lute and wander the countryside.
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It IS a wonder, isn’t it? I mean, *I* don’t teach my kids these rhymes, so I assume that other parents don’t teach them to their kids, yet the girls come home with them anyway.
I haven’t heard Miss Mary Mac in decades, though – I wonder if I can find it on the internet…..
I have noticed differences in verses, but not tunes. Perhaps, it is because I grew up farther over and farther down. There are some new songs about Barney and other characters we didn’t have growing up. Something about pushing him overboard so he’d drown.
From the mouths of babes. On the opposite end, you will be disappointed at how well “He is gay” is utterly disdanined.
If you wander the countryside with a lute – you gotta tell me when you decide to do it – so I can take pictures….