Warning: important question about communications coming. Don’t tune out just yet.

Jingle Bells, Batman smells,
Robin laid an egg.
The Batmobile lost a wheel,
and the Joker got away, HEY!

I remember this song from my youth. Actually, a similar one, because the Joker never made an appearance in the version I heard back at Sawtooth Elementary in Twin Falls, Idaho. Late 70s to early 80s, if you must know.

So imagine my surprise to hear my 5-year-old girl and 3-year-old boy singing it over the weekend. (I am fully aware that the boy doesn’t always get the lyrics right, but it’s usually an error of omission instead of improvisation.) I don’t know how old the song was when it got to me, and I’m not sure how many iterations it has been through in that time. I do know that my 3-year-old is singing it, even though I’m fairly certain he doesn’t know that a robin is a kind of bird.

The telephone game

You tell a friend, who whispers it to a friend, who tells it to another, and so on until the original message gets garbled into oblivion. Some call it ‘message creep,’ and it’s not just a phenomenon of people. Errors in translation cause mutations. Most of them are lethal to the cell. Of the few remaining, many render the cell (or the organism) sterile. Of that remaining group, a few are disadvantageous enough for natural selection to wipe away. And a few make for wonderful advances in ability and viability.

What struck me about the ‘Batman smells’ meme is the longevity. It has stayed on the schoolyard for decades, prompted by the calendar to poke out every holiday season. This is in stark contrast to internet memes, which flare up and flame out within a matter of days. (Reminiscent of the rythym of the cicadas.) One generation of kids with faulty memories store away the verses, and hand them on to other kids, who move away and spread the song virally. The song is in fact everywhere, and if it does disappear for a little while some kid will bring it back.

The death of a meme

I’m sure that at some point, one of the gross-out Nickelodeon cartoons will create a version with references to bodily functions, and that will exist in reruns as the steady-state stabilizing influence that cements the debate once and for all. If not, there will be a definitive version that gets the honor merely for having high search engine optimization. Somehow, someway, the more we become connected the less variety we will enjoy. I don’t want to exist only in social networks. It’s dead-end places like Occam’s RazR where original thoughts spring forth without succumbing to the noise and co-opting of the echo chambers.

So, I turn to you for help.

In the comments below, please (as faithfully as you can) reprint the lyrics of the “Jingle Bells, Batman smells” song you remember from your youth. Do it for the children.

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