Where are you going, my dear children?

Nursery rhyme and game Rainbow Flip. Photo: Document

From a term referring to mental decline, Brain Rot has now transformed into a trend, an addictive content ecosystem on the Internet, where users are attracted to characters, sounds, and sayings so popular that they can be heard and seen everywhere.

A Brain Rot universe consisting of images of unrealistic characters created by AI and content producers on a background of electronically arranged sounds is creating a fever among young people, especially children. My two little friends are no exception. Listening to the two of them play together, excitedly singing strange, soulless songs, I suddenly remembered the nursery rhymes of my childhood strangely.

Like "Chi chi chan chan" when I was still immature and learned to babble along with my mother: "Chi chi chan chan/ The nail blows fire/ The horse's reins break/ Three kings and five emperors/ Catching crickets and looking for them/ Buzzing, buzzing".

A little older, I followed the neighborhood kids gathering to play and sing Rainbow Flip: “Rainbow Flip/ River water flows/ There is a seventeen year old girl/ There is a thirteen year old girl/ The two of us/ Together we flip the rainbow”.

Or "Globe" when playing claw explosion, if there are more people then you can play Dragon snake up to the clouds: "Dragon snake up to the clouds/ There is a shaking tree/ Is the boss home?"...

Nursery rhymes have been with us throughout our childhood. The passage of time may have made the words less memorable, but the memories of the rhymes and the games we played back then remain intact. That’s why I wonder why children today are no longer interested in that lovely treasure.

Perhaps the change in living environment has faded the role of nursery rhymes when children have less space to participate in collective games. But thinking back, it is probably mostly due to us adults. Because we are too busy with life to earn a living to bring a full material life, we seem to forget to pass on to our children a colorful spiritual life.

Learning about nursery rhymes through newspapers and books is even rarer. Meanwhile, dedicated works to collect and preserve nursery rhymes are not absent. Books instructing how to sing and use nursery rhymes in games for children such as “119 nursery rhyme games for children”, “219 folk games for preschoolers”... seem to only attract preschool and elementary school teachers and are of little interest to parents.

In the long run, will the nursery rhymes still be passed down or will they remain only in a distant memory? Will there still be a painful search for the answer to the question “Where are you going, oh nursery rhymes”?...

Source: https://baodanang.vn/ve-dau-oi-hoi-dong-dao-3302799.html