“…Everybody hates me. I’m going to eat some worms!”
This is something is used to hear my older sister say when I was a very young kid. Has anyone else heard it? Does come from a book? Movie? TV show? Or was it just some sing-songy thing she made up on her own? (I intend to ask her next time we talk.)
As children, my siblings and I learned this from my mom. When one of us was pouting over something, she’d sing the first verses of the song to jolly us out of our funk. Then the rest of us would pick up the tune as well, which, of course, was no help at all.
Around these parts, it was:
Nobody loves me, everybody hates me
I eat worms all day
First you bite the heads off
Then you suck the guts out
Then you throw the skins away
And the baby bumblebee song. Wee Weasel hates that song. He makes me turn it off every time. I think he can’t imagine anything worse than having gross stuff all over his hands.
“Turn it off”? Wait, does that mean you have a recording of it? When I was a kid, songs like these were passed along strictly by word of mouth, which is how it should be. It just seems Wrong for there to be professionally made recordings of them.
(Just as it seems Wrong to me for there to be mass-produced, commercially available Rice Krispie treats. Rice Krispie treats should only ever be homemade and brought to potlucks and bake sales.)
I’m always fascinated by the origin of things like this.
Did one person come up with it? Many people and it got refined over time? Did it pop into existence spontaneously out of the aether? Is there any way to ever know? Does the person that first came up with these kids songs know they came up with it?
As for the OP, I never actually heard it until college, used ironically (isn’t everything in college used ironically?). Pretty sure no one sang it in my grade school peer group.