Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Little Miss Muffett

When I was in college my friends and I liked Andrew "Dice" Clay's nursery rhymes a lot. He took nursery rhymes and basically made 'em offensive, surprising and funny. A genius combination for us college-age kids.

Here's the least offensive one I could find:

Little Miss Muffet
sat on a tuffet
Eating her curds and whey.
Along came a spider,
Who sat down beside her
And said, "Hey, what's in the bowl, bitch?"

I took a calligraphy class my sophomore year. One of our assignments was to write a nursery rhyme in calligraphy on a big poster-sized piece of paper. So I did that, but wanted to do more. You can see where this is going, right?

I carefully wrote out all the letters and words of the above-mentioned Miss Muffet variation. It's slow work doing calligraphy, especially when you're a beginner. It's all one letter at a time. I got distracted when I was just finishing the 2nd to last word, "Bowl." I was one word away from finishing my masterpiece. I thought it wold get some laughs from my friends. So I looked away, got back to work, and realized I had made a mistake:

...
Who sat down beside her
And said, "Hey, what's in the bowl,
bo

I had started writing the word "bowl" again. Ugh.

I figured I might as well finish it, even if it was ruined. I don't remember who walked in next and saw the finished product. But as it turned out, the phrase "Bo bitch" became pretty popular in my group of friends. Like "Hey, what's up bo bitch!?"

I'm sure I could still get a laugh out of them today.