(part 2) Another one by Edward Lear, which I loved when I was a little kid, begins: A was once an apple pie, Pidy Widy Tidy Pidy Nice insidy Apple Pie! B was once a little bear, Beary! Wary! Hairy! Beary! Taky cary! Little Bear! Many of the interior rhyming words are made up, but something about the rhythm and rhyme always made me laugh. When I was a kid, and perhaps still, girls played group jumprope games that involved the challenge of jumping rope while reciting rhymes or rhythmic chants. One of them required the players to think of alphabetical names to fit into the chant as they jumped. The first girls would step into the rope and start jumping, reciting something like A, my name is Alice, And my husband's name is Andrew, And we come from Australia, And we sell apples. The next girl would have to fill in the names with B's: B, my name is Barbara, And my husband's name is Benny, And we come from Bermuda, And we sell bricks. To kill time on long trips or while waiting for something, we used to play a game called "I packed my grandmother's trunk." This was a cumulative memory game. The first person would begin by saying, perhaps, "I packed my grandmother's trunk with alligators." The next might say "I packed my grandmother's trunk with alligators and bananas." The next, "I packed my grandmother's trunk with alligators, bananas, and cameras." Each person needed to remember all of the words the previous players had use.

(part 1) It is a sort of game, and it occurs in many contexts in US culture. Yes, A is for [apple]" is indeed a formula. When children are beginning to "learn their A-B-C's," parents will often play little games, saying "A is for [this]," "B is for [that]." They often will use the child's name, and the child's face will light up when the parent gets to "S is for Sophia," or whatever her name is. And "alphabet books," in which each page has a single letter, and a word beginning with that letter, and a picture of the word, have been used to teach and entertain children for centuries. It's hard to know where to begin! Yes, the formula is puzzling. The pattern "[X] is for [Y]" usually means Y is the only, or the main purpose of X. Hammers are for nails, cups are for drinks, shoes are for feet, and so on. A phrase like "A is for Alligator" suggests that A is for spelling "alligator" and nothing else. It is as if there were only one word in English beginning with A. It doesn't make sense. Nevertheless, that is the formula. The late Sue Grafton wrote a very enjoyable series of mystery books, about a private detective named Kinsey Millhone, which all have titles formed on this pattern: "A is for Alibi," "B is for Burglar," "C is for Corpse," and so on, up to "Y is for Yesterday." She made many of us sad by dying before she could complete the series, to be titled "Z is for Zero." Many people have written satirical alphabet rhymes for adults on the "A is for..." pattern, e.g. "A is for Atom, surely small, perhaps round Which nobody's happy that anyone's found." There are many alphabet games, rhymes, and songs that don't follow the "A is for ..." pattern. The great nonsense poet, Edward Lear, wrote several. One begins: A was an Area Arch, Where washerwomen sat; They made a lot of lovely starch To starch Papa's cravat. B was a Bottle Blue, Which was not very small; Papa he filled it full of beer, And then he drank it all.