When I was a little boy, I’d hear the girls on my street singing that song throughout the summer as they jumped rope - two girls twirling the rope, one girl (or sometimes two?) jumping. The tune was monotonous, all the syllables except the rent were on the same note, with the rent going up a halftone or two.
But I never paid any attention to the words that followed. Anyone know what they are?
The jump roping back then was (at least in my neighborhood) very ladylike and could be mastered by klutzes, it seems. But nowadays with Double Dutching it gets very fast, very athletic, and impressive as hell. I’ve only seen it on TV and it’s great.
Do we have Double Dutching Dopers?
Just to be sure I was using the right terminology (Double Dutch), I Googled on it and at…
…found a cute story about it. You might like it—about a girl’s Dad, at the height of 6’6"in his long navy blue overcoat, would jump rope for girls when he came home after work.
"Dad would have to hold his coat up over his knees and bend over at the waist as he jumped (ne’er a miss) and sang his preamble to Teddy Bear Teddy Bear: “My mother, your mother lived across the way, 2-4-6 East Broadway; every night they had a fight and this is what they’d say…”
No Double Dutching at that site, but note the links at the top.
I have a friend who lives in a tenement at 266 East Broadway, which is just up the street. I’ve never seen him Double Dutching, but he’s a pretty kinky dude.
Double dutch was rarely done by the girls I knew. Sometimes we’d happen to have two long ropes and we’d play (nothing like the high paced stuff I’ve seen some kids do though). I was never very good at that.
Usually we’d either have our own individual ropes and sing our rhymes as we crossed arms or other simple tricks, or we had one long rope and several of us would play. The rhymes I remember are Teddy Bear Teddy Bear, Cinderella, and Bluebells.
