"It's X's world. We're (all) just living in it."

[Wilson Gray]

I heard this first - in fact, only - in 1955 in the form, "It's your
world. Just let me live." I've continued to see it in literature, over
the decades. Since this was used as the response to a greeting, it was
very quickly worn down:

Q. S hapnin?

A. Yo worl.

It came from nowhere and returned there very quickly. I probably would
have forgotten that I had ever heard it, if it wasn't for the fact I
was introduced to it by one of my ace-boons, Garlon Davis, a dynamite
purveyor of the latest  slang and the newest jokes not to be confused
with Garland Gregory (once upon a time, "Garland" [gaal at n],  in various
spellings, was a common name among black males), a brother of the
former comedian, Richard - as we knew him in St. Louis - Gregory. I've
often wondered why he let his name be changed to "Dick," instead of
maintaining, a la Richard Pryor.

-Wilson Gray

On Jul 13, 2005, at 3:41 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      "It's X's world.  We're (all) just living in it."
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --------
>
>  From today's Times (E1):
>
> "Three centuries later, it's still Louis XIV's world.  We're just
> living in it."
>
> It occurs to me that although I've heard this countless times, with
> various values for the variable in the subject line, and of course
> without the necessary presence of the "still" in the version cited
> here, I have no idea where and when it originated, and Google, which
> offers 1620 hits on "world we're just living in it", doesn't
> immediately help.  Does anyone know?  (And what's the
> lexical/constructional counterpart of an earworm, anyway?)
>
> Larry
>