Grammar school and the zoo

When I was in grade (grammar) school, all lessons stopped at 10:00 a.m. on Monday morning. That was the time for a radio program (no TV back then) called At the Zoo. We would listen to this program for 15 minutes and then talk about the animal that was discussed on the program.

The song that introduced the program is still with me.

At the zoo, the great big zoo, I dearly love to watch the little monkeys.
Some are hanging by their tail from a bar, some are riding on the rail in a car.
Sometimes I am wondering what do monkeys think of people while the people watch
the monkeys at the zoo.

And there were other "animal" songs that I learned in my early grades at school:

I went to the animal fair, the birds and beasts were there, the big baboon by the light of the moon was combing his auburn hair. The monkey he got drunk, he climbed up the elephant's trunk. The elephant sneezed and fell to his knees, that was the end of the monk, the monk, the monk, the monk.

Silly, isn't it. But we children enjoyed singing it.

Then, today, as I was watching the Mummers' parade (out of Philadelphia) one of the clowns did his drunken dance to Me and my teddy bear.

Me and my teddy bear, have no worries, have no cares.
Me and my teddy bear just play and play all day.

That's all there is to that ditty.

As I recall these things, sometimes it's a short phrase on TV or in a movie, or sometimes it's a smell, or sometimes I'm talking and out comes something that goes all the way back over 50 years. It amazes me that the mind can store and recall so many things. And, oh, how I wish, it could recall even more!