Who is Don Alverzo, and why does he have so many tweezers?

June 9, 2010 10:29 AM

One Hen. One Hen, Two Ducks. One Hen, Two Ducks, Three Squawking Geese.
posted by usonian (20 comments total)

One fish. Two fish. Red fish. Blue fish.
posted by Naberius at 10:32 AM on June 9, 2010

Doesn't even SOUND like Lady Gaga.
posted by HuronBob at 10:34 AM on June 9, 2010 [1 favorite]

We had to memorize a version of this in my high school Psychology class and up until this post I never knew what it was.

Another riddle of my youth solved!
posted by C^3 at 10:34 AM on June 9, 2010

FIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIVE GOOOOOOOOOOOOOLD RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINGS
posted by Sys Rq at 10:37 AM on June 9, 2010 [4 favorites]

I was told there would be no math.
posted by Tavern at 10:40 AM on June 9, 2010 [1 favorite]

Ether they mean Quay County, New Mexico, or they're mispronouncificating quay.
posted by Hoenikker at 10:54 AM on June 9, 2010 [1 favorite]

Action Jackson? I slit the sheet? I am the pheasant plucker?
posted by twintone at 10:57 AM on June 9, 2010

Monkey Chicken Duck
posted by briank at 11:09 AM on June 9, 2010

We said this, verbatim, at almost every Boy Scout campfire we had. None of us ever really understood where it came from, but we all had it memorized. Thank you for helping me solve that mystery!
posted by siclik at 11:09 AM on June 9, 2010

At the age of 12, however, most of us were just mumbling at the end ;)
posted by siclik at 11:10 AM on June 9, 2010

This is AWESOME.

That is all.
posted by Pickman's Next Top Model at 11:12 AM on June 9, 2010

If I click those links I'm not going to see a bunch of farm foul pooping on each other, am I?
posted by The 10th Regiment of Foot at 11:25 AM on June 9, 2010

Here's the version I learned in 6th grade:

One hen
Two ducks
Three squawking geese
Four corpulent porpoises
Five globular lobsters
Six pairs of Don Alverzo's tweezers
Seven thousand Macedonian soldiers in full battle array
Eight brass monkeys fom the ancient sacred crypts of Egypt
Nine apathetic, diabetic old men on roller skates with a direct propensity towards procrastination and sloth
Ten lyrical, spherical denizens of the deep who haul, stall and crawl around corners under quo, quivey and quay all at the same time without bumping into each other

posted by scalefree at 11:43 AM on June 9, 2010 [1 favorite]

My father always tried to remember this, and tried to get us to remember it as well, so thanks for the memory. I never knew what it was all about.
posted by davejay at 12:03 PM on June 9, 2010

The Tibetan Memory Trick! I've already taught my older son to do this (well, all but "ten", which I never properly memorized). I recall two different versions from Dr. Demento, at least one of them recorded by Flo & Eddie.
posted by Songdog at 12:06 PM on June 9, 2010 [1 favorite]

Wow. We used to do this all the time as kids. I always thought it was an Imus routine from when he was doing drugs.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 12:39 PM on June 9, 2010

My friend ran me through this in my freshman year of college. I got almost all the way through nine before I screwed any of it up, which he said had to be some kind of record.
posted by Navelgazer at 12:45 PM on June 9, 2010

I memorized this as part of my improv training. I then shared it with a friend who informed me we had messed up some stanzas. I am now incapable of memorizing it the right way.
posted by chairface at 3:18 PM on June 9, 2010

They made you memorize stuff for improv training? Did you also have to learn hog calling for your mime training?
posted by lore at 3:37 PM on June 9, 2010

I'm glad I'm not the only person for whom this was a foggy childhood memory. I happened to tape the Doctor Demento Show on May 18, 1986, and he played that same Blue Chips' recording of it. It didn't occur to me to look for it online until something jogged my memory and made it pop into my head.

(I owe the good Doctor a debt of gratitude for that episode, which I listened to many, many times after taping; Shel Silverstein! John Hartford! Moondog! The Beat Farmers! Monty Python! I had no other cultural context to place them in at the time, but holy crap were my horizons expanded in spite of myself.)
posted by usonian at 4:16 PM on June 9, 2010