Pick a Pickled Pepper

Some girls lick on lollipops, but I never will.
I prefer the piquant taste of vinegar and dill.
Pickle up some peppers  and shove them in a jar.
Put a label on it to show them who you are.
If a cute boy eats one, he will pucker up,
and perhaps you’ll plant a kiss where he deigned to sup.

Pick a cherry pepper, press it to your lips,
and that special spicy boy might want to steal some sips.
Do not tell your mother. Do not tell your dad,
or that might be the only pepper that you ever had.
Lollipops are sweet, but just a little coy.
Pickles work much better for picking out your boy.

 Strangely enough, the song “Lollipop, Lollipop” has been going through my mind for the past few days.  I even made up different lyrics to the tune of it to sing to Annie, my 15-year-old ill cat,  as I drove her (meowing all the way) home from the vet the other day. The men who stand in the road to wave people into the fish restaurants near San Juan Cosala must have wondered at me as I hollered out the strange song at the top of my lungs, just like my dad used to do to startle a howling baby into silence.  Ah well.  We get odder as we get older but have more of an excuse for it!