I’ve heard, n!gger, tiger, piggy, injun, nickle, and probably others. I don’t really recall which one was most common, maybe injun and tiger. I grew up in: California, Washington (the state), Maryland, Georgia and Florida, although by the time we got to Florida I probably wasn’t using rhymes like that to choose things. We also counted potatoes.
My kids now use tiger exclusively, although they also sometimes use this rhyme:
Inkey, pinkey, ponkey,
Daddy had a donkey.
The donkey died,
Daddy cried,
Inkey, pinkey, ponkey.
And I don’t really recall the “My mother hit your mother” one mentioned earlier. Just “my mother said to pick the very best one…”
“Tiger”, and only tiger, growing up in El Paso, Tx. I’m 37 now, and I had never heard the n-word version until the news story about the Southwest airlines incident.
51, grew up on eastern Long Island, NY. It always was “tiger”: I never was even aware of the other version until it was mentioned in a National Lampoon article in the early 70s when I was around 20.
I’m 52, and I grew up in an Irish-Italian neighborhood in the North Bronx in NYC. It was always and invariably “nigger” when I was a kid. (There were no black people living in my neighborhood until the 1970s, and few would even venture into the area in the 50s or early 60s.) I never heard the “cleaned-up” version (with tiger) until I went to college.
I don’t think we even understood that the word was supposed to be “bad” until we were older - that was just the word you used. Likewise we referred to the local laundry as “the Chink’s,” without any realization that it was derogatory.
nigger or tiger at random, seattle area, late 60’s early 70’s.
We had blacks in the neighborhood, never treated them any different than we did anyone else. Even used the rhyme with them present (they did it too) when we were getting ready to play hide & seek. We knew what a nigger was, and we knew we didn’t know any.
I was perplexed once when an Arab friend of mine started a similar chant.
MATCHKA: “What’s that?”
DAVID:“It’s a selection chant like your ‘eenie meenie minie moe…’ You know.
‘Eenie meenie miney moe,
catch a negroe by the toe (His emphasis, complete with eye contact)
if he hollers let him go ,
eenie meenie miney moe.’”
and then from the back of the room: “What’s this ‘Let Him Go’ crap?”
I haven’t been keeping a tally, but I get the impression from the replies in this thread that “nigger” is more common in the Commonwealth (except Canada).
[sub]FWIW, race was not an issue when I was growing up. That is, I was not brought up to notice any difference between people. Although I did give a friend a beating when I was nine after he said “nigger” and I told him that if he said it again I’d beat him up. He said it again. I just knew it was a “bad word”.[/sub]
Raised in small town British Columbia, Canada - it seemed like every single person in my school, neighbourhood, and probably town was white, including me and my family.
Heard the “n” word in this context when I was 10 or so, at school. Honestly can’t remember what my thoughts were. I think I would have just thought someone had learned the rhyme incorrectly.
Eeny Meenie miney mo,
Catch a TIGER by the toe
If he hollers make him pay
Thirty dollars every day
My mother said to
Pick the very best
One and you are not
Going to be it
For the rest of your life!
was how we said it. I grew up in Northern California and I’m 24 years old.
One time, when I was about 6 years old, some other kids that I played with used the “n” version and I didn’t know what “n” was. When we got home (we were walking home from the bus stop) my mom put me on a time-out for saying the “n” word. I didn’t even know what it was! I though “n” was some other version of tiger. That was my first exposure to the word.
Boy, was I pissed off that my mom punished me for saying something that I didn’t even know what it meant.
“Tiger”. Didn’t know that it was nr until my grandmother told me. Which led to a discussion about race, in which I learned that my father used to refer to the balcony in a movie theater as "nr heaven". And so I learned the difference between institutionalized racism and personal prejudice.
I knew the nigger version from a very young age, though, as my late grandmother was extremely racist and delighted in using racial slurs at every opportunity.
I’ve never even hear of the other versions! I always liked the idea of catching a tiger by its toe, especially if it were cute and fluffy. It might tickle the tiger!
Of course, in practice it would not turn out quite like that.
I never knew about the other versions, and, at the time, I didn’t know what was wrong with the version we used. We also used the other term for Brazil nuts. I may have learned this from my parents, who were Australian.