Sipping Cider
We are at the point in the pandemic where I spend inordinate amounts of time dissecting the words to children’s songs. A case in point: The camp song, “Sippin’ Cider.”
The cutest boy I ever saw
Was sippin’ ciiiiiiider through a straw
So we have a cute boy. He’s sipping cider. The singer of the song asks the boy if he’ll show them how to sip cider because this is apparently a very difficult task. And he shows them:
First cheek to cheek then jaw to jaw,
We sipped that cider through a straw
Okay, so they’re sipping cider, and we are to imagine their faces smushed together—cheek-to-cheek. Not facing each other, right? They are side-by-side, drinking what amounts to thick apple juice.
Once in a while, the straw would slip,
And we were sipping lip to lip
Not sure how the straw slips enough to drag their heads down, but we’re not told their bodies turn towards one another, correct? They were drinking cheek-to-cheek, and now their heads are lower to the glass, and they are drinking lip-to-lip.
Yet the very next lyrics imply that they are now drinking cider facing forward (when did they turn?), with their head near the glass, and this is the REASON THE TWO PEOPLE HAVE SEX.
That’s how I got my mother-in-law,
And 98 kids that call me ma
Wait. Let’s just pretend almost every single pregnancy is a quadruplet pregnancy, and there is one pregnancy per year. That means drinking cider next to this person caused them to have sex at least 25 times AND each one yielded a quadruplet pregnancy. This was followed by three pregnancy-free months and another pregnancy. Provided the person stopped having children at 42—a highly realistic age to not be able to conceive regularly anymore—they were 17 years old when they first started having four children at a time.
Who is parenting this teen who apparently does not know how to (1) sip cider OR (2) use protection?
Maybe I have too much time on my hands.
7 comments
We sang this as kids too, though I never heard the mother in law verse! And here in England, cider varies from fairly alcoholic to very alcoholic indeed… which might be an explanation for why things take the turn they do?
Hahahaha. What a weird song and your analysis cracked me up!
LOL! We also sang this song as kids — BUT — we sang “sipping soda from a straw.” Which, when I think of it, is odd, because in Canada (or at least my part of it) we refer to “pop” and not “soda” which is an Americanism. We also “And at all at once, the straw did slip, we sipped our soda from our lips” (i.e., they were kissing — or at least that’s how I interpreted it) — and also “14 kids who call me Ma” and not (eek!) 98!
We also sang a song in university residence to the same tune. I forget most of the words now, but it started “The cutest boy I ever saw was surely not from Tache Hall” (the guys’ dorm next door — which is where dh lived when I met him, lol. The song obviously did not apply to him!). It also had the guys retorting “You Speechly [Hall] girls ain’t got no class.” Oh memories…
I have somehow never heard this song. But “who is parenting this teen who does not know how to sip cider or use protection?made me actually laugh out loud.
I have never heard that song. Maybe bc I didn’t go to camp?
Reminds me of a Kenny Rogers song…it goes something like “…four hungry children and a crop in the field…” my sister (when we were kids) thought it was “…four hundred children and a box of oatmeal…” 😂
You’re so funny! I’m going to have to google the song. Thanks for the laugh.
I used to analyze cartoons when my daughter would watch them. I was not always a fan of the themes.