As children we loved to be tucked into bed with the rhyme and rhythm of Mother Goose. What we missed was the historical significance. As A Rhyme and a Reason points out, Mother Goose's stories often involved actual events and real people - Ring Around the Rosie described plague symptoms and Georgie Porgie may have been King George I of England.

Through the ages, Mother Goose has lost her relevance, but that's no reason to let her gather dust on the bookshelf. With just a little work, we can have Ms. Goose spruced up and ready to say good night to the Information Generation.

Consider, for instance, how Mr. Porgie might have fared now that Bill Gates has made nerdishness profitable and, therefore, chic:

Georgie Porgie, programming guy,

Kissed the girls and made them cry.

But when he cashed his check today,

They no longer ran away.

Of course, not all programmers are so benign.

Little Jack Horner,

Sat in the corner,

Cracking computers online.

He got, last summer,

Your secret PIN number,

And trashed your good credit line.

Even if you don't get hacked, there's always the problem of getting lost. And, as Old Mother Hubbard's modern day equivalent would soon discover, too much can be nearly as bad as too little.

Old Mother Modem,

Found it quite slow when,

Trying to log onto the Net.

And when she got there,

Found stuff everywhere,

Just not what she's looking for yet.

The solution to Mother Modem's problems might be a high speed ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) phone line. Then again, maybe not. As Humpty Dumpty found out, ISDN can also stand for It Still Doesn't Work.

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.

Wanted to make a digital call.

All the technicians, and all of Bell's men,

Couldn't install his ISDN.

If Humpty ever gets that line working, he might discover that the Information Superhighway can also be the road to ruin, especially if there are teenagers in the house.

Jack and Jill,

Wanting a thrill,

Accessed a triple X chat room.

But Jack had a frown,

And Jill was let down.

SurfWatch won't let them in that room!

Another nursery rhyme heroine would also get quite a shock online. As the folks at The Year 2000 Center point out, the Millennium Bug is bigger than anything that might have sat down beside her.

Little Miss Moffet,

Made quite a profit,

Working online each day.

Till a bug quite hideous,

Did something insidious,

Subtracted a century of pay.

Luckily, there's still time to work on that problem. Sadly, the same is not true for this column. So, until next week, sleep tight and don't let the bedbugs bite!

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