Author Archives: Benjamin White

Pickle XMas Ornament

Every year at Christmas after his family has decorated the Christmas tree, my informants mother will hide a pickle shaped Christmas Ornament on the tree. The first of the children to find the ornament, and bring it to her, gets a special present from her.

 

My informants mother (who is the active bearer in his family for this tradition) is German, however he is not sure where this tradition originated. There are a number of possible explanations, including simply the fact that the green of the pickle ornament is hard to find amongst the green of a pine tree, and the fact that sending children on a search for a phallic object may be preparing them, at least on some level, for the sexual encounters they will have in the future. In any case, my informant just enjoys competing with his siblings for a chance at an extra present at Christmas time.

Bunny Ears

Normally this would be done in a casual restaurant with cloth napkins, however we didn’t have any cloth napkins available when I collected this, so I took pictures using a washcloth. My father learned it from his father and has now passed this knowledge on to me. Normally you make bunny ears to either make a child laugh or to try and embarrass the people you are eating with. My informant is definitely a kid at heart, so he really enjoys pulling pranks and acting mischievously. This coupled with the fact that his wife and oldest son are embarrassed whenever he makes the bunny ears has led to their continued creation

Bird poop = good luck

Being pooped on by a bird gives you good luck.

My informant was first told this by his parents after a passing seagull had relieved itself on his person. At the time it had cheered him up as he claims he was very distraught at the time. Looking back however, he is pretty sure his mom was just trying to make him feel better rather than conveying something that she actually believes.

Bugs

In programming, a bug is unintentional/unwanted behavior of a program or algorithm.

The story goes that back when computers were being developed in the 1940’s, computers occupied huge, refrigerated rooms. One day while one of these computers was running, it began to behave sporadically. Perplexed, the engineers began going through all of the hardware to see if they could find a problem. They searched for hours until eventually, they found a bug had been stuck in one of the cable jacks. After removing the bug the computer behaved normally. Ever since, these sporadic errors have been called bugs, and the process of removing them has been called debugging.

 

Its interesting to note that this process has transferred from its supposed origins as a piece of hardware terminology and is now used primarily for problems with software. My informant also told me that there is some controversy over the origin of this story, however despite this he still strongly believes that this is the true version of the tale. He does not recall where he first heard this story, but I have also been told this exact narrative by my father when I first started studying computer science.

Killing Spiders

Killing Spiders is bad luck.

My informant first heard this from his girlfriend a few years ago. He described his girlfriend as being “really superstitious,” and seemed to disregard most of her other beliefs. Perhaps his belief in this is related to his arachnophobia.

This folk belief can also be found in The Adventures of HuckleBerry Finn

Twain, Mark. The Adventures of HuckleBerry Finn. p 171

http://books.google.com/books?id=n2FA-nwz7GYC&lpg=PA171&ots=Zpmm96UjrP&dq=tom%20sawyer%20spider%20kill&pg=PA171#v=onepage&q&f=false