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Comment by cestith | Hacker News Reader

In my childhood neighborhood, we didn't let the tiger go, and we didn't repeat the initial line.

"Eenie, meanie, miney, mo Catch a tiger by his toe If he hollers make him pay fifty dollars ev'ry day"

It wasn't so much to "count", as we counted with the named of numbers. It was applied as a pseudorandom selector, with the assumption that the person counting hadn't thought through the math to the point of knowing which child would be "it" for the next game of tag. Whoever starting counting around the circle first got to point to the "eenie" person, then around the circle. Sometimes this would be followed by another rhyme and there were a few options for that.

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Just as a counterpoint to all the anecdotal rebuttals here in the comments with regional variants: growing up in California, the rhyme was as stated in the article, with the opening line reiterated at the end.

I'm in Illinois (and have been since later childhood) and think here in Chicago it is the same as I have never heard any of the variations mentioned here.

I grew up in the 90s in the Chicago suburbs and the rhyme was as you described. The first time I can recall hearing a variation was when I saw Pulp Fiction at 17.

edit: actually, I remember that "my mother said..." one as well, as an occasional ad-libbed variation.

For us it was:

Eenie meenie minie mo / Catch a tiger by his toe / If he hollers, let him go / My mother said to pick the very best one / And you are not it

I wonder if it's a regional difference -- I'm from Arizona.

Also from Arizona:

Eenie meenie minie mo / Catch a tiger by his toe / If he hollers, make him pay / Fifty dollars ev'ry day / My mom said to pick the very best one / And you are it

The variations with those kinds of elaborations towards the end always seem more amenable to ad-libbing more or less syllables (like "very", or "are not" versus "aren't") to change the result when you see how it'll turn out.

You could try to play tricks like saying "mom" instead of "mother" or something, but anyone with any sense of rhythm would have noticed it was the wrong number of beats.

We did the "my mother" one, and this was an easy spot to cheat if you could think quick enough. In that last phrase, you could put in or omit the "not", thus changing the meaning based on who you liked and where the count was about to fall.

I lived in Yuma in 3rd-6th grade, 1993-1996. Depending on who was doing the counting, that was often the exact rhyme. The clever ones among us figured out the pattern, and would switch between "and you are it/not it" as necessary to get our way.

I also remember that there was some combination that extended the rhyme but didn't change the result. When I figured that out, it frustrated me that the other kids would still insist on using it.

The "my mother" one was one of the optional additional selection rhymes. This was in the Mississippi river valley of northeastern Missouri / western Illinois.

Brooklyn, 1970s: Eenie meenie minie mo / Catch a tiger by the toe / If he hollers, let him go / My mother said to pick this one

(with the last line being the most common variant I remember, although I think it was common to strategically append things like 'and you are not it')

That's the variation I remember from my childhood in Miami.

Central Illinois: same version

I lived in central Illinois for a few years (well, several if you count west central) but during those years I didn't have much need of playground rhymes. If I remain curious about this, though, I have a number of people I could ask for their anecdotes.

I lived in Quincy, then Springfield, then Quincy again.

I grew up in Georgia and this sounds like what I remember.

We didn't modify the rhyme like you, but we used it to the same purpose. Each kid would put both fists into the ring. The counter would count with one fist tapping each kid's fist in turn, and when he came to the missing spot (for the fist he's using to count), he'd tap his own chin.

Aside from the one potato two potato mentioned in the article, the only subsequent rhyme that I can recall started out something like Engine engine number nine...

Same, but "Racing car number 9, losing petrol all the time, how many miles did he go?" but we didn't put "spuds in" for that, just pointed. The person on "go" would say a number, you'd count on to find the person who was out, it, or whatever.

Engine engine number nine, going down Chicago line. If the train should jump the track, do you want your money back? Y-E-S spells yes [N-O spells NO] and you are not it! (1980s, south of Seattle)

It seems like a ritualized rhyme for 'random' selection makes more sense than using it for counting, for which ordinary numbers suffice.

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