�y��vlog

Clapping and jump rope games are also widespread in the U.S. and around the world, and range from simple clapping patterns found in “Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake baker’s man,” on to the complex and multi-versed rhymes such as “Miss Mary Mack” or “Miss Mary Had a Steamboat.”

They played cards and pat-a-cake clapping games, in effect living the childhood denied them.

Reading them is somehow inherently delightful, like reciting the names of flowers: Pat-a-cake, Poison, Mary Mack, Cut-a-Lump, Kerplunk, Ghost-in-the-Graveyard, Dandy Shandy and so on.

Then he leans forward and, still seated, dribbles Harlem Globetrotter-style, tiny pat-a-cake dribbles, then rat-a-tat big ones between his legs, and then a crazy weave, the whole time grooving to the music.

The children of the Firs Mobile Home Park chase each other down the neighborhood street after school and clap to centuries-old nursery rhymes like pat-a-cake.