In Third Grade we had an awesome teacher (90% sure her name was Miss Hume, I remember her short, curly, dark hair and tall, thin frame far more vividly than her name, but I always was dreadful with names – and still am) who had spent the previous few years teaching in Indonesia. She passed on quite a bit of the Indonesian language to us in class throughout the day. She also taught the older grades as well so we learned more and more. By the time I graduated primary school and reached high school I knew so much Indonesian that when they tried to teach us (it was one of the mandatory language classes for the first two years of high school) I was a whole year ahead of the rest of the class.

While the vast majority of what I learned all those years ago has been lost in the recesses of my memory there is one thing that has stayed with me for almost two decades: A song about chickens.

The tune and the repetitive lyrics have stuck in my head for two decades.

Several times in the past I’ve tried to track down the song, failing miserably due to uncertainty as to both the spelling of the lyrics and the accuracy of my memory of said lyrics. Finally – driven mad by a need to prove this song exists to my husband – I found a YouTube video.

or if you want to know the lyrics

For the tender of heart don’t try to translate the lyrics, if memory serves things don’t end well for the chickens – yet it’s a song traditionally sung by children (or you’d hope so since I was taught it when I was nine years old).

Have you had a song plague you as long as this one has plagued me?