Yesterday, I heard the children that live upstairs from me singing the song “On Top of Spaghetti.” That song makes no goddamn sense at all, and the next time I see those kids, I’m going to tell them that!

Here is a breakdown of the lyrics, with commentary:

On top of spaghetti,

 All covered with cheese

I hate to start off by being so picky, but this is not a nutritious meal. In fact, it’s downright disgusting. Don’t get me wrong. I love pasta, but all covered with cheese? The lyrics are not “on top of spaghetti, sprinkled with cheese,” or “on top of spaghetti, with just a dash of cheese.” No. The spaghetti is all covered with cheese, meaning that one cannot even see the actual spaghetti.

And then we wonder why there’s a major epidemic of childhood obesity in this country! According to the Center of Disease Control and Prevention, twenty-four percent of American children are overweight, and those same children are three times more likely to develop diabetes, hypertension, osteoarthritis, and colon cancer. That’s a major reason why I don’t have kids; I can’t cope with their Poor Nutritional Habits.

I lost my poor meatball

Your “poor” meatball? Meatballs don’t have emotions. Go take your medication, kid.

When somebody sneezed.

Was this “somebody” a magician? I mean, who, other than David Copperfield, can sneeze and make someone lose their meatball?

 It rolled off the table

If the meatball rolled off the table, then that means that a magician was not present, and that he did not actually make the meatball disappear. It’s good that we have that clarification, but it needs to be subsequently noted that the meatball was never “lost” to begin with. It was dropped. I have no tolerance for poor grammar, and even less tolerance for alarmists. This child’s parents would be wise to read him the tale of The Boy Who Cried Wolf.

While I’m on the subject of the child’s parents, when they were cooking him dinner, why was the meatball placed on top of the spaghetti instead of on the side of the plate? Surely, they must have known better. Or maybe not. After all, I mentioned earlier that this child has poor nutritional habits, and I pointed out that he covered every inch of his spaghetti with cheese. It is logical to assume then that this obese child had so much spaghetti on his plate that there was nowhere else to place the meatball except for on top of the spaghetti. If that’s the case, then his parents are still the ones to blame; children usually pick up their poor nutritional habits from adults.

But let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that the child had only a small portion of spaghetti on his plate. If that were true, then the only reason why his meatball was placed on top of his spaghetti was because he was playing with his food, which his parents should also have not allowed. If I had a kid, I would never allow him to put his meatball on top of his spaghetti, for no better reason than that the meatball could roll off of the spaghetti and fall into his glass of wine! And there is nothing that upsets me more than when a perfectly fine glass of Bordeaux gets wasted! Especially by a five-year-old!

Allow me to backtrack for a moment by once again exploring the fact that this child dropped his meatball after somebody sneezed. How hard does somebody have to sneeze in order to make someone else’s meatball go flying off of their plate? Did he get his spaghetti sneezed on by a sumo wrestler? Because by now, based on this family’s poor nutritional habits, the alert reader would have come to the conclusion that is most likely a gargantuan family. Either way, the more important issue is this: what kind of inconsiderate cocksucker would directly sneeze onto someone’s plate of spaghetti and meatballs? If I were this kid, I would have smashed my glass of wine across that son of a bitch’s face!

But apparently, this kid doesn’t seem to mind. All he cares about is tracking down this rogue meatball. After it rolled off the table, he claims that it then rolled

onto the floor,
And then my poor meatball,

Again with the “poor” meatball!

Rolled out of the door.

Oh it did, huh? Does this kid live on the top of fucking Mount Everest? Well, probably not, since Mount Everest doesn’t have any doors. Wherever he lives, it’s obviously on a very steep incline. Either that, or his dinner table is right next to the door. Even so, why do they keep the door open? Flies are going to get in! Also, before the meatball even gets the chance to roll out of the door, wouldn’t his dog eat it? Yes, I know that this song has no references to dogs, but I’m just assuming that he has one. Why? Because every boy should have a dog. Unless that boy’s name is Michael Vick.

And under a bush,

And then my poor meatball,

Was nothing but mush.

Something tells me that when this child gets older, he will not be accepted into any Ivy League schools. Before it became a meatball, it was nothing but mush anyway! Someone had to roll that pile of mush into a ball, hence the term “meatball.” Anyway, from this point on, the song becomes truly disgusting.

The mush was as tasty,

As tasty could be

So let me get this straight. After someone sneezed on this meatball (which any normal human being would then refuse to eat), it rolled on to the floor (collecting more germs), and then it rolled outside (where it must have collected dirt), and then it rolled into a garden and under a bush (where it must have collected even more dirt)… AND THEN THE KID STILL ATE IT? Is he a starving Ethiopian?

And then the next summer,

It grew into a tree.

Two things. First of all, I don’t know much about horticulture, but I highly doubt that someone could use a flattened meatball to grow a tree. Aside from the fact that meatballs lack the proper chemical composition to make harvesting possible, this lad mentioned nothing about the meatball being placed beneath the garden’s soil. Therefore, are we expected to believe that a tiny slab of meat, placed on top of the earth’s soil, will produce a tree? Again, I’m no expert on horticulture, but I think this kid is full of shit. If the meatball was just sitting there, then eventually, an animal or another Ethiopian would have come along and eaten it.

This brings me to my next point. If he knew the mush “was as tasty, as tasty could be,” then that means that he must have eaten it. So if he already ate the meatball, how could it have eventually grown into a tree? It’s inconsistencies of this sort that lead me to question the plausibility of this young man’s story.

But just in case there aren’t enough red flags going up, the next verse borders on the absurd:

The tree was all covered,

All covered with moss,

 And on it grew meatballs,

 And tomato sauce.

Yes, I think I read about this tree. It was in the Bible, right after the part about talking bushes, giant arcs, and virgin births. Fucking dimwit!

The child ends the song by attempting to drive home the moral of his misadventures, turning the final verse into a cautionary tale:

 So if you eat spaghetti,

 All covered with cheese,

 Hold on to your meatball,

 Whenever you sneeze.

Despite the child’s efforts, the listener comes away with more questions than answers. Why is there so much sneezing going on while eating spaghetti? Is it allergy season? Or is it caused by the massive amounts of cheese? Also, the child instructs his listeners to hold on to their meatball whenever they sneeze, but there is a much better solution, one that his perpetrator clearly failed to think of: THEY CAN COVER THEIR MOUTHS!

The post A Thorough and Insightful Breakdown of the Childhood Song ‘On Top of Spaghetti’ appeared first on Robot Butt.