Someone taught Evie the rhyme “eeny, meeny, miny, moe” and now all decisions must be made this way. What will you eat first off your plate? Which crayon will you use? Who should put you to bed tonight? Always, eeny, meeny, miny, moe, like it’s some sort of infallible magic 8 ball, with all the right answers.

Evie’s actually learned a few of these lately, although eeny, meeny, miny, moe seems to be the rhyme of choice.

Bubble gum, bubble gum, in a dish,
How many pieces do you wish?

These really brought back some memories, I haven’t thought about a lot of these since I was a kid.

Engine, engine, number nine,
Coming down Chicago line,
If the train goes off the track,
Do you want your money back?

The part that is funny is that everybody has their own set of “add ons” onto the base rhyme.

Eeny, meeny, miny, moe,
Catch a tiger by the toe,
If he hollers, let him go,
Eeny, meeny, miney, moe

Now here’s where it starts to get interesting:

My mother told me to pick the very best one

I would assume the purpose of these add-ons is to allow you to select the outcome you want: if you don’t land on the right thing, just tack something on the end and keep going.

And out you go with a dirty, dirty dishrag on your big fat enormous toe

However, it never worked that way for us; we always did the whole thing, all the way to the end.

Signed by the U.S. of the A.

And yes, I have Evie doing all the extras now.

Sara thought all of these extra additions were pretty hilarious, although I never really considered them much before. I probably learned them from my mom, they kind of sound like something she would do. What about you? Did you stick with the eeny, meeny, miney, moe, or did you have your own extras at the end? Were they the same or different from what we had?