Riddle Song

If you've ever seen the movie Animal House (and good lord, is there anyone under the age of 5 who hasn't?), you're probably familiar with the iconic scene where some earnest folkie is serenading some ladies on the steps of the Delta House during the toga party, when Bluto takes his guitar from his hands, smashes it to bits, then hands the remnants back to the stunned folkie with a demure "sorry."

I had always assumed, based on the few lines that actually appear in the movie, that the song had been made up by the film's writers. So imagine my surprise when, while listening to yet another one of the mini-BG's CDs, I hear those familiar words and discover, to my horror, that the pain doesn't end there. Here are the lyrics in their entirety:

I gave my love a cherry that had no stone
I gave my love a chicken that had no bone
I gave my love a story that had no end
I gave my love a baby with no crying

How can there be a cherry that has no stone?
How can there be a chicken that has no bone?
How can there be a story that has no end?
How can there be a baby with no crying?

A cherry when it's blooming it has no stone
A chicken in the shell it has no bone
The story of how I love you it has no end
A baby when it's sleeping it's not crying

So the first question that immediately popped into my head was "Why in the world would anyone want to sing this song?" I mean, those lyrics are so insipid they make Vanilla Ice sound like Mark Eitzel in comparison.

Coming rapidly on the heels of that thought, however, was this one: Even if it were possible that the song was performed by oh-so-serious young men and women in an attempt to woo whoever the hell it was they were desperately aching to boink back in the day, how can you now, 30 years after Animal House was released, perform that song in anything other than an ironic fashion?

My first, and prevaling, theory is that these folks have absolutely no idea that the song has been reduced to a half-minute joke and there's nothing ironic about their performance whatsoever. They are those earnest folkies from back in the 60s (or their descendants), and they really, truly believe in the beauty of this particular tripe.

My second, tin-foil-hat theory is that they're trying to re-introduce the song by targeting today's toddlers in the hopes that some day, maybe 20 years hence, a new breed of earnest folkies will once again woo their potential one-night-stands with those timeless words. (As they cruise on their hoverboards, wearing the latest temporary-tattoo clothing and fighting off zombies with their gravitron phasers).

One thing I do know: if I hear the beach ghostlette start cooing those lyrics while strumming on an acoustic (or plucking her recently acquired mbira--and no, I'm not kidding), I'm going to laugh at her. I've already set aside some spare cash to pay for the therapy.