“Get Out of My Bathtub!” While Swinging

Hi there. You have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Sam. I’m calling from Brooklyn.

Hey, Sam. Welcome. Well, what’s on your mind today?

So I am originally from Arkansas.

And when we were kids, when we were swinging next to each other, if we started swinging in sync, we would say, get out of my bathtub.

And I then moved to Missouri and discovered that no one there used that expression.

Years later, I was a classroom teacher here in Brooklyn and discovered that no one here used that expression.

And then recently I was talking to a friend from Maine who did know what that expression meant and used it in the same context that I did.

So I think that you had discussed in the past where that expression might come from, but I was really curious about how it would be common in Arkansas and in Maine, but not in any of these states in between.

Oh, that’s a great question.

When you were a kid in Arkansas, on the playground, you’d be swinging.

And what’s happening when, and then what’s the expression that you say again?

When you’re swinging, you know, when you get to a point where you’re swinging side by side, really in sync with each other, one of the kids would say, get out of my bathtub.

Get out of my bathtub.

Yeah, that’s it.

So what we talked about before was maybe one of the reasons that people say, get out of my bathtub is because that dirt hollow underneath your feet kind of looks like a bathtub.

And Jacqueline from Michigan, the last time we talked about this, she said they not only used it for when they were in sync, but when someone would get in the path of your swinging in that dirt ditch, you would also shout, get out of my bathtub.

And there were other ones.

Anna, who grew up in New Hampshire, said they would say, get out of my window.

Crystal from Bondsville, California, said they would get out of my shower.

And Sue, also from California, says they would say, get out of my toilet.

So there’s like a theme here.

There’s like a bathroom theme.

Anna in Ohio said they called it double dating.

And similarly, Catherine Tallahassee said they would yell, look, we’re married, if you’re swinging in sync.

There’s all these variations.

And that’s how children’s folklore works.

Children not only pass it to each other, but they come up with their own innovations.

They want something that’s theirs.

Now, the great folklorists Iona and Peter Opie have done a lot of work and have several books of children’s folklore.

And I’ve talked about it on the show before, and it’s some of my favorite work at all in all of folklore.

And they talk about this strange circumstance, for example, when a rhyme would be about, say, the royalty in London.

There’d be a rhyme on the playground that they would collect.

And then they would get, say, a letter two weeks later from one of their correspondents in Australia, one of their informants, with that same rhyme.

And you wonder, how could that happen?

How did a children’s rhyme make it across the oceans and these two continents and these two playgrounds?

And it’s because the networks of children work the same way that adult networks do.

Children, they pass these things just as quickly as they pass the common cold, really.

They’re little sponges for everything, including funny little rhymes and funny little sayings.

And they’re also quick to parrot.

They’re quick to say something back and repeat it later.

So in some ways, children are more social than adults, and they’re more likely to see this stuff, this folklore spread across great distances.

Well, thank you so much. This was really wonderful.

Thanks for sharing these memories.

Call us again sometime.

Thank you.

Bye, Sam.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

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