We all know the drill from 4th grade:
“Eeny meeny miney moe
Catch a tiger by the toe
If he hollers let him go
Eeny meeny miney moe.”
In my social circle, however, stopping the divinatory process here was considered the height of gaucherie; there was also a mandatory second half, ignored only if the person doing the eenying was very very big and whoever ended up "Moe" was either very very small or very very unpopular. Having been moderate in both size and popularity, I still know it by heart:
“My mother said to
Pick the very best one
And you are it
Y-O-U spells you!”
There's still nothing that turns my guts to jelly quicker than having someone yell "YOU!" while pointing directly at me. Except, I imagine, for having someone yell "YOU!" while pointing directly at me with a gun. But I digress. Being singled out is rarely fun, especially when it means that you've just been chosen for some distasteful and/or dangerous task, such as stealing all of the teacher's chalk, seeing if aerosol hairspray + lighter = recess flamethrower (answer: yes, if you're not particularly attached to that whole "having eyebrows" look), or talking to a member of the opposite sex.
The point of the story, such as it is, is that I eventually decided to break down the pattern so I'd never get "Moed" again, and that's how I taught myself the concept of "mod", even though I didn't realize it at the time. Anyway, I was trying to use this example to explain patterns, divisibility, and remainders to one of my math students today, though, and we got sidetracked by...well, by whether you count "eeny", "meeny", etc., as (my position) one syllable/point or (his position) two. I seem to remember it being pretty clearly one discrete unit, but then again, 4th grade was a lot more recent for him than for me. So which is it, people? And any other "eeny" stories that you care to share?