Everybody’s heard of Peter Piper
And the peck of pickled peppers that he picked
That’s such a silly simple children’s game
It hasn’t even got a name
But I’d like to bet that it’ll trip you
And I bet you’re gonna have to say you’re licked
If Peter Piper you pronounce with ease
Then twist your tongue around these
Moses supposes his toeses are roses
But Moses supposes erroneously
For Moses he knowses his toeses aren’t roses
As Moses supposes his toeses to be
That’s tongue twisters
And it seems so easy till the word gets sprung
If you insist you want to try a lisp
Then step up mister and twist your tongue
Now Kissle will whistle at busty Miss. Russell
Who’ll rustle and bustle till Kissle will roar
So Russell asked Axle for Kissle’s dismissal
And this’ll teach Kissle to whistle no more
That’s tongue twisters
And it seems so easy till you twist your tongue
Tito and Tato were tattooed in total
But Toto was only tattooed on his toe
So Tato told Tito where Toto was tattooed
But Tito said Toto’s tattoo wouldn’t show Theda thought Thora was thumping her thimble
But Thomas thought Thora was thumping her drum
Said Theda if Thora’s not thumping her thimble
I think that she surely is thumping her thumb
That’s tongue twisters
And it seems so easy till the word gets sprung
If you insist you want to try a lisp
Then step up mister and twist your tongue
Now Charley is chary when choosing his cheeses
And cheese is a challenge when Charley arrives
When Charley is charming and chooses a cheddar
Then chews it and chips it and chops in some chives Heda is hoping to hop to Tahiti
To hack a hibiscus to hang on her hat
Now Heda has hundreds of hats on her hatrack
So how can a hop to Tahiti help that
Snobby Miss. Nora is sniffing her snuffer
The snuffer’s no sniffing it makes Nora sneeze
When Snyda lets Nort know his Nora is sneezing
She snappily snorts Nora’s sneezing a breeze
Sheila is selling her shop at the seashore
For shops at the seashore are so sure to lose
And she’s not so sure of what she should be selling
Should Sheila sell seashells or should she sell shoes
That’s tongue twisters
And it seems so easy till the word gets sprung
If you insist you want to try a lisp
Then step up mister and twist your tongue Twista felt Twister was trying to whistle
But Twister had twisted his tongue.
(Danny
Kaye - "Tongue Twisters")
Willy's real rear wheel
(or We're real rear wheels)
(repeated
six times, very fast)
Frogfeet, flippers, swimfins
(repeated six times, very fast)
Tie twine to three tree twigs
(repeated six times, very fast)
Snap Crackle Pop
(repeated six times, very fast)
Scissors sizzle; thistles sizzle
(repeated six times, very fast)
He threw three free throws
(repeated six times, very fast)
I slit a sheet
A
sheet I slit
Upon a slitted sheet
I sit
I am not a pheasant plucker
I'm a pheasant plucker's son
I'm only
plucking pheasants
'Til the pheasant
plucking's done.
A canner exceedingly canny
One morning remarked to his granny:
“A canner can can
Any thing that he can
But a canner can’t can a can, can he?”
(Carolyn Wells)
A tutor who tooted the flute
Tried to tutor two Tudors to toot.
Said the two to the tutor
"Is it tougher to toot, or
To tutor two tooters the flute?”
A flea and a fly in a flue,
Were imprisoned, so what could they do?
Said the fly, "Let us flee!",
"Let us fly!" Said the flea,
So they flew through a flaw in the flue.
Betty Botter bought some butter,
"But," she said, "this butter's bitter;
If I put this bitter butter in my batter,
It will make my batter bitter;
But a bit of better butter,
Better than the bitter butter
Will but make my bitter batter better."
So Betty Botter bought a bit of better butter,
Better than the bitter butter.
She put the better butter in her bitter batter
and made her bitter batter better.
So 't was
better Betty Botter bought some better butter.
Fresh French fried fly fritters
(repeated six times, very fast)
Supposed to be pistachio
(repeated six times, very fast)
Argyle Gargoyle
(repeated six times, very fast)
Peggy Babcock
(repeated six times, very fast)
Willy's really weary
(repeated six times, very fast)
I saw Esau sitting on a see-saw
I saw Esau with my girl
I saw Esau sitting on a see-saw
Giving her a merry whirl
When I saw Esau, he saw me
And I saw red and got so sore
So I got a saw and I sawed Esau
Off that old see-saw (The Ames Brothers)
She stood on the balcony,
inexplicably mimicking him hiccuping,
and amicably welcoming him in.
Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager
imagining managing an imaginary menagerie.
The epitome of femininity.
Ned Nott was shot and Sam Shott was not.
So it is better to be Shott than Nott.
Some say Nott was not shot.
But Shott says he shot Nott.
Either the shot Shott shot at Nott was not shot,
Or Nott was shot.
If the shot Shott shot shot Nott, Nott was shot.
But if the shot Shott shot shot Shott,
Then Shott was shot, not Nott.
However, the shot Shott shot shot not Shott, but Nott.
The Two-Toed Tree-Toad A tree-toad loved a she-toad
Who lived up in a tree.
He was a two-toed tree-toad,
But a three-toed toad was she.
The two-toed tree-toad tried to win
The three-toed she-toad's heart,
For the two-toed tree-toad loved the ground
That the three-toed tree-toad trod.
But the two-toed tree-toad tried in vain;
He couldn't please her whim.
From her tree-toad bower,
With her three-toed power,
The she-toad vetoed him.
Truly rural
(repeated six times, very fast)
Swatch watch
(repeated six times, very fast)
Shut up the shutters and sit in the shop.
She sits in her slip and sips Schlitz.
Wow, race winners really want red wine right away!
Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.
A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked.
If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,
Where's the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?
A skunk sat on a stump.
The skunk thunk the skump stunk
but the stump thunk the skunk stunk.
Who stunk? The stump or the skunk?
I saw Susie sitting in a shoe shine shop.
Where she sits she shines, and where she shines she sits.
Send toast to ten tense stout saints' ten tall tents.
How
many cookies could a good cook cook
If a good cook could cook cookies?
A good cook could cook as much cookies
as a good cook who could cook cookies.
The Smothers brothers' father's mother's brothers are
the Smothers brothers' mother's father's other brothers.
I wish to wish the wish you wish to wish,
but if you wish the wish the witch wishes,
I won't wish the wish you wish to wish.
As I was in Arkansas I saw a saw that could
out saw any saw I ever saw saw.
If you happen to be in Arkansas and see
a saw that can out saw the saw I saw saw
I'd like to see the saw you saw saw.
When a doctor doctors a doctor,
does the doctor doing the doctoring
doctor as the doctor being doctored wants to be doctored or
does the doctor doing the doctoring doctor as he wants to doctor?
Moses supposes his toeses are roses,
but Moses supposes erroneously.
For Moses, he knowses his toeses aren't roses,
as Moses supposes his toeses to be.
(Donald O'Connor and Gene Kelly in "Singing in the Rain")
Hassock hassock, black spotted hassock.
Black spot on a black back of a black spotted hassock.
Symphony in F
(The
Parable of the Prodigal Son)
Feeling footloose and frisky, a featherbrained fellow
forced his father to fork over his futurely forthcoming farthings. His fortune
furnished by his forlorn father, fast and furiously he flew from familiar
fertile furrowed fields to foray in foreign fallow free ranges. Foolishly he
frittered his fragment of the family's fiscal fortune, feasting fabulously with
free-and-easy fawningly friendly, if flawed, floozies and faithless friends.
Flooded with frissons of flattery, he financed a fully-fledged fling of funny
foam and fast food. Fleeced by his fellows in folly, facing famine, and feeling
faintly fuzzy, he found himself a feed-flinger in a filthy foreign farmyard.
Finding his faculties famished and feverish, he fain filled his frail frame with
filched fragments of foul, nay, foetid, fodder he fed to farrowed pigs.
"Phooey!" he fumed, fanning his fingers on finding corn husk fragments fixed
firmly in his front fangs. "My father's flunkies fare far fancier!" The frazzled
fugitive feverishly faced the facts of his waking phantasm. Frustrated from
failure, filled with foreboding, he forlornly followed his finer feelings and
finally fled as fast as his flailing feet could furnish flight from the filthy
foreign farmyard.
Faraway, feeling fretful and full of failure, his feeble father focused fondly
on the faintly familiar form in the far field and flew to his restored son, the
object of his filial affection, and fondly flung his fragile forearms around the
fatigued fugitive.
Falling at his father's feet, the fugitive floundered forlornly, "Father, I have
flunked and fruitlessly forfeited family favor in shekels and francs, and I feel
to petition your forgiveness! Find me foraging work and I will forever fend off
your foes and friendless foragers, and find you a fine fellow, even if, forfend,
you find me no further fit to be called your son."
Finally, the phrenetic but faithful Father, forbidding and forestalling further
flinching, frantically flagged the flunkies to fetch forth the finest fatling
and fix an effervescent feast. The father fixed the finest fabric fanon-like
across the frame of the unfrugal fellow, fondled his frayed hair, and on his
foredigit fixed his seal.
Meanwhile, the father's faithful first-born who had not fled to frolic with
floozies and fast friends was fully occupied fetlock deep in ferns in the fields
on the forest’s fringe fixing fences, even as father and fugitive were feeling
festive. The foreman felt fantastic as he flashed the fortunate news of a
familiar family face that had formerly forsaken fatal foolishness but who now
fled fulsomely back to the fold. The first-born let fixings and hammer fall to
the floor and fast-paced drew on the farmhouse, following the flavors of fine
festive fare with flared nares, fists flailing as he fronted a fight for
familial philanthropy.
Forty-four feet from the farmhouse the first-born found a farmhand fixing a
fatling and frying fish on a fire of former floorboards. Frowning ferociously as
faultfinders do, he fumed at his fawning father, "Floozies and foam have
frittered family funds and you fix a feast following the fugitive's female
folderols!
He flexed his face into a physiognomy foretelling fearful fortune. Fiercely he
demanded, "Am I a foundling or your first-born?" Father faced the phenomenon as
pharaoh faced the faithful follower of the Foremost, fidgeting his feet like a
fowl on a furnace. Father fastened his resolve and stood firm, his philanthropy
fixed by the physics of fatherhood, the very fountain of faith, through whose
forbidding foramen flows the unfailing fruit of fellowship and fair play. "Am I
a Pharisee?" he asked his son, "Or am I your father who shall fill full each
font as I feel fit, and not be forced as a man not free to fill the flute of
whatever flautist pipes?
The first-born's fury flashed like a feudal felling-axe fast falling through
fathoms of Fahrenheit-filled sunshine, his face fluorescent with furore. But
further fussing was futile, his fervor flagged like fog at midday and flew.
In fulminating fortissimo fashion, he faulted the father for failing to furnish
a fatling and feast for his friends, and flayed his father’s focus on
forgiveness. His folly that fateful Friday was not in feeling fit for feast and
fatling and failing to finagle same for his favorite familiars, rather his flaw
was his feelings about the fairness of the festival for the fraternal fasting
fugitive, his filial fellow, and his fate.
Although the frugal first-born felt it fitting for him to be to be fully favored
for faithfulness and fidelity to family, father, and farm, rather than his
foolhardy and failed fellow family member, he foresaw his funeral if he fostered
frenzy and frowardly fanned flames of fire against his father’s final profession
of his fate.
His fundamental fallacy was a fixation on favoritism rather than on forgiveness.
Focusing on feeling one’s fellows have found unfair favor foully festers, and
the friction following forces the faded facade of the foolish to fecklessly
fall, however fabulously built. As it falls it reveals the full feelings of the
fellow feeling less favored.
Frankly, the father felt the first-born's frugality of forgiveness was
formidable, frigid, and frightful, and fought back the feeling to flagellate the
fellow with a floorboard. But the father's faithful fortitude and fearless
forbearance to forgive both the former fetishist fugitive, and also his affected
first-born, flourished in the face of the firstborn’s fatalism.
The farsighted father figured, "Such fidelity is fine, but what forbids fervent
festivity for the fugitive that is found? Unfurl the flags and finery, let fun,
frolic, and festivity freely flow. Former failure is forgotten, funk is
abandoned, and folly is forsaken. Forgiveness forms the foundation for future
fortune of all our family. Freely have I fended for you, freely do I love you,
and freely I forgive your foibles, so freely forgive each others follies if you
would be my sons and follow me."
Four facets of the father's fathomless fondness for faltering fugitives are
forgiveness, forever-faithful friendship, fadeless love, and the facility for
fully forgetting flaws. Fathers from France to Finland form a forum of
never-failing felicity for their families. Fathers are fortresses of love and
acceptance, the very fastnesses where the Heavenly Father’s finest gifts are
reposed, all freely bestowed on each whether never faithless, or repentant
sinner. Father’s are the fording places of the fast flowing rivers of life that
would overwhelm their young. As wise as foxes, harmless as feathered doves,
watchful for failure, fending off flops, flounders, and shortfalls, fathers feel
the full weight of their vocations.
Fortuitous and felicitous, indeed, is a father’s full and free forgiveness. A
Father’s fondness for his fledglings is unfailing, whether faithful or
unfaithful, and we must thank our Father in Heaven that this is so, or else
where will we find favor and feel full and frank forgiveness when we finally
meet the Father of fathers?
