Origins
The song derives from an American children's playground song, "circle circle, dot dot", that supposedly serves to immunize a child from the affliction of cooties. The words are as follows:
- Circle, circle.
- Dot, dot.
- Now you got your cootie shot.
The words circle and dot are accompanied by the corresponding shape meaning in the shape of two circles with dots in the middle being traced (or, in some cases, drawn with a pen or marker) on the recipient's hand or arm. If the cootie shot was self-administered, "you" and "your" may be substituted with "I" and "my". In some areas a self-administered shot is not considered effective (the "shot" is considered to have been already infected with cooties).
There are also several variations:
- Circle circle,
- knife knife.
- Now you got your shot for life.
- Circle, circle.
- Square, square.
- Now you have it everywhere. (Or "Now it will stay there.")
- Circle, circle.
- Line, line.
- Now you have it all the time. (Or "Now I'm protected all the time.")
Read more about this topic: Circle Circle Dot Dot
Famous quotes containing the word origins:
“The origins of clothing are not practical. They are mystical and erotic. The primitive man in the wolf-pelt was not keeping dry; he was saying: “Look what I killed. Aren’t I the best?””
—Katharine Hamnett (b. 1948)
“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)
“The settlement of America had its origins in the unsettlement of Europe. America came into existence when the European was already so distant from the ancient ideas and ways of his birthplace that the whole span of the Atlantic did not widen the gulf.”
—Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)