Monthly Archives: April 2015

Iowa’s Epic Beach Party

Version 1:

So I guess Grandma Pat and Grandpa Carballo were visiting Dad at college. And they couldn’t decide if they should check in at the hotel first or just go right to Dad’s house. So they decided to drive by Dad’s house and what they saw was all the furniture was outside and there was sand all over their lawn.

They were having a huge beach party. There maybe was even sand inside, inside the house.

And Grandma Pat just turns and goes, “Maybe we should just go to the hotel.”

 

(see Iowa’s Epic Beach Party version 2 for context and further analysis)

“Parrots in the Neighborhood”

Text:

In my neighborhood, around when I was born, this idiot smuggled in a bunch of Amazonian parrots. He couldn’t take care of them so instead of doing something smart and taking them to a zoo or whatever, he just let them loose because he didn’t want to get in trouble for smuggling them in the first place. Eventually they just multiplied and multiplied and now there’s a huge colony of parrots around my neighborhood and they’re really fucking loud all the time and I hate it. Whenever someone did something dumb around the neighborhood we’d all say: “Oh, that must be the parrot guy.”

Background:

I heard that explanation from my sister who I think heard it from our backdoor neighbor. Pretty much everyone in the neighborhood knew. Nobody knew who though, we couldn’t point to a specific house or anything. I just thought it was funny, that this guy was so irresponsible with Amazonian parrots of all things. It was just bizarre.

Context:

Like I said, if anyone fucked up, we’d say “Oh you’ve got to be the parrot guy” or “Shut up parrot guy” or whatever. It was kind of our neighborhood insult, ‘cuz we used it all the time and everyone on the block would know what you meant, you know?

My Thoughts:

I think this is a really interesting story because it attempts to explain strange things in peoples’ environment. The people in the informant’s neighborhood created an origin story for these strange birds, and the most interesting part is that the truth value is so ambiguous since everyone is really confident that this happened but no one can point to a specific house or person that did it. I also find it interesting that it’s turned into a neighborhood-specific insult, which is again a good way of creating in-groups as if you aren’t really a member of that neighborhood unless you know this story.

Cooking with Eggs

If you have a mole in your eye and you look at a dish that involves eggs while it’s being made, it won’t turn out well, especially when the recipe involves stew. The possible accidents can range from the egg popping to the stew ending up going bad.

Analysis: This is a type of contagious magic that my informant’s family believes. My informant actually does have a mole in his eye and this actually occurred multiple times. He believes the mole came from his mother’s side and that all these incidents are actually coincidences. However, whenever an egg stew is being made, his family tells him specifically to get out of the kitchen. I think these are also coincidences, since I’m sure the recipe has gone wrong more than once when the informant was not in the kitchen. The informant was never told how having a mole could mess up the recipe, so this seems to be without evidence.

The Turtle and the Shark

The informant’s family originated in Samoa, his parents were born and raised there before traveling and moving into the United States. He takes many visits to Samoa and is very in touch with his Samoan heritage and culture. He shared some common folklore with me that he could think of off of the top of his head. 

Informant…

“During a time of a huge famine and starvation spread across Samoa a blind grandma and granddaughter were put out of there family because they were seen as kind of a burden. They decided to jump into the ocean to cast their fates upon sea because it was giving and caring. Magic turned them into a turtle and a shark. The grandma and granddaughter wanted to find a new home. They traveled for a long time and were constantly turned away from potential homes until they found the shores of Vaitogi. Vertigo had high cliffs and a rough coastline, the shores were occupied by a compassionate and generous group of people. The old woman and her granddaughter turned back into their human form. They were welcomed by the people of Vaitogi. They fed them and offered that they make this village their new home. The old woman decided to make it her home, but she felt a connection to the sea as if it were her home too. She couldn’t stay on land, so she told the villagers that she and her granddaughter had to go back to the sea. She said that they would make village waters their permanent home. She gave the villagers a song to sing from the rocks and a promise that when they sang the song she and her granddaughter would come to visit. They returned to the sea and turned into their turtle and shark forms. To this day, the people of Vaitogi still sing the song and many villagers will tell you that they have personally seen the Turtle and Shark. To each of them the legend is as alive today as it has been.”

The informant also told me that there is a song that goes along with the legend, he said that he doesn’t know it and only certain people in the village of Vaitogi are able to know the song.

Analysis…

This legend of Samoa is different because it goes against the Samoan value of family by throwing the grandma and her granddaughter out of the house. However, this legend depicts that it is hard to be accepted into the different samoan communities but when you are accepted they treat you as family and give you the upmost respect. This legend helps to show the culture of the people of Samoa and how they do things. The grandmother wanted to be a part of the ocean so she left the village that accepted her but lived in the nearby shores and visited only when a song was sang. Also, this legend shows the importance of animals in this society. The grandmother and granddaughter were both transformed into two common sea creatures, and shark and a turtle. The informant wasn’t sure why but it is important to the story. The informant said that this story originated in Vaitogi by its natives, but he heard it from his grandma.

“Just resting my eyes”

Informant :

So actually, “just resting my eyes”  when I’m taking a little nap, I actually got that from, do you remember, your great-uncle, Dennis?

Well his wife, Rita, she used to work at the hospital. And they have late shifts, sometimes. She was working 3:00 to 11:00 at night. So at night she would call him and say “Now Dennis, I’m driving home.”

In case… she had car trouble or just to have someone know where you are. And every time or almost every time, he’d be asleep when she got home.

So she woke him up and said, “You’re supposed to be listening for me!”

And Uncle Dennis said, “I heard you come in the drive. I was just resting my eyes.”

context: 

Papa, my grandfather, the informant, told me the story behind this family expression, over the phone after I explained to him and my grandma what I was looking for, in terms of folklore. I saw both of them over Easter. Papa takes at least one nap a day and if someone accidentally wakes him up he often says “I was just resting my eyes” to make them feel better or because he knows we think it is funny. The informant told me this one on one on the phone.

 

thoughts: 

It has become a family proverb, but started, ironically enough, as a well-worded excuse for negligence.

 

 

Informant 2, age 22, accountant

Another family expression that Papa always says and now I’ve heard the cousins say is “I’m just resting my eyes.” when they’re actually asleep. But I don’t know when that started.