Fly away home. Your house is on fire and your children are alone.”
Can anyone tell me the etymology of that rhyme? I’m sure you too used to chant it to lady bugs when you were a kiddo. But what in the heck is it supposed to mean? Really, it’s rather morbid for little kids. Could it possibly have some hidden meaning like “Ring-Around-the-Rosy”? As you probably already know that rhyme is actually about the plague.
Ring around the rosy (refers to the buboes or “plague marks”…cyst-like bumps)
Pocket full of posey (were the little bouquets of flowers some people carried…supposedly to ward off the sick-air caused by the plague…but probably also because the plague rotted flesh… it was a stinky disease)
Ashes…ashes (Actually, I believe the original was: “Achoo! Achoo!”)
We all fall down! (People dying.)
Perhaps, the Ladybug poem has some similar more sinister meaning.
Why am I thinking about ladybugs?
Well, currently I am in ISS and I have no customers. (Which means the kids are behaving themselves in their classes…good for them…boring for me.) Just now and out-of-the-blue a ladybug flew past my face and landed on my computer screen…whoosh and whoah…and in looking up I ascertained that my ceiling was covered with ladybugs; and, even though I have more productive things I could be doing, I started to count. The trick of it was that these buggers kept moving around!
So, instead of writing about how fatigued I am, and how I can barely keep my peepers open…I decided to write about the bugs on my ceiling. Last week’s phlebotomy helped, but I still can’t seem to get a second wind. I am already looking forward to the next blood-letting…bring on those leeches...hahahahahaaa….even though the last one was fairly uncomfortable especially after the phlebotomist couldn’t find the vein in my left arm and dug around there forever until she gave it up as a bad job and stuck me in the right.
I’m a little nervous that I am this tired. Next hour I sub 7th grade gym class! Then, on to Eureka! Eureka College that is…I am starting to take college classes again…on a limited basis, on Thursday nights. Wish me luck! I’ll need it to be coherent by 8PM this evening when class adjourns.
I can do this I can do this I can do this!
At any rate I am supposed to be compiling student results from this year’s PLAN exam (which is a standardized test… it’s like an ACT pre-test for sophomores). But when I started I kept losing track of which student answered what incorrectly, and soon realized I was making little hash-marks all over God’s creation not to mention the pock-marked spread-sheet that was laid out before me. So it looks like a good time to start counting ladybugs!
