Author Archives: Bryan Oliver

Banoonooed

The informant provided the following as a tale his father would tell him before bed,for the purpose of making sure he didn’t eat too much before going to sleep.

Alright, so, when I was a kid my Dad, (first of all my dad’s family is Philippeano. my dad is full Philippeano.) So he would tell me that, uh, if I ate right before bed I’d, what would happen was, it was called “banoonooed.” [ban-noon-noon-ed] and what that means is that if you eat before bed when you go to sleep you’ll have a bad dream and your entire hair will go, just like… white. So yeah, anyway, if you eat before dinner and if you eat too much, er, sorry, if you eat too much before you go to sleep it will give you nightmares, and those nightmares will be so scary that your hair will just go completely white and I think that’s, like my dad didn’t make it up, but I think it’s to stop people eating before going to bed and… yeah. 

As the informer notes, this tale is not specific to his family, but it does seem to be a Philippeano tale in general as opposed to one which has spread across cultures. As the informer noted to me, large meals are a significant part of Philippeano culture, and a tale warning against their consumption before bed is likely more relevant to their culture than others. Furthermore, the scare-tactics and over the top consequences for eating too much before bed, make it a good children’s story, and that gives its moral a context.

A Knock Knock Joke Involving Cows.

Here is another knock knock joke, one which follows the standard pattern, but is more fun because it involves cows:

Informant: Knock knock

Me: Who’s there?

Informant: Interrupting cow

Me: Inter[MOOOOOO!]

[a pause]

Informant: You’re supposed to go “interrupting cow who?” and then I… interrupt them.

 

While the informant did not recall exactly where he heard this joke, he did remember to have heard it or its variations multiple times while working with young children. It’s silly formula and absurdity surely appeal well to children, and it seems that it likely arose first from among children themselves

Festivus

The Informant provided the following when asked to describe a tradition in which he took part:

So, every year, instead of celebrating Christmas, some families celebrate the holiday of Festivus, which is, um, basically,you get a giant metal pole, and, like that’s sort of your…. and you decorate that kinda like a tree, and you eat spaghetti and meatballs, and you have an airing of grievances, which is, you can you sit down at the table with everyone and you get to stand up and you get to just say anything you want about anybody in the room, like that’s been bugging you or whatever without any repercussions this one time of the year you can do that, and at the end of the night, the last thing you do is the oldest member of the group wrestles the youngest member of the group, and that goes until the youngest member can pin the oldest member… and that is the festival of Festivus, which is a Christmas… winter? holiday.

The informant said that every year, his fraternity celebrates this festival, and he takes part in it. Although he admitted it is originally from the popular sitcom Seinfeld, making it originally fakelore, it has since taken on a life of its own, being practiced with much more detail and variety than was originally included in the television show from which it developed. Festuvus serves as a secular alternative, or simply an addition, to the Christian Holiday of Christmas, and seems to draw on both traditional and pagan themes to create a winter holiday which will appear to a wide youth demographic.

“Knock Knock, Who’s there?………..”

This is another seemingly popular “knock knock joke provided me by my informant:

Informant: say “knock, knock”

Me: knock, knock

Informant: Who’s there?

[a long pause followed by laughter]

Informant: Yep, that’s the joke!

 

In this joke, the teller attempts to invert the knock knock sequence, by attempting the get the other party to tell him a joke without having a joke in mind, thus being rendered dumbstruck. It adds an interesting twist of deception to the otherwise predictable “knock knock” pattern.

A Grammatical “Knock Knock” Joke

In the following, the informer tried to tell a grammatical Knock Knock joke:

I = Informer, M = me (interviewer)

The 1st Attempt:

I: Um, knock knock?

M: Who’s there?

I: Whom is there

M: No…

I: Wait no that’s not right!

 

The 2nd Attempt:

I: Wait, knock knock, sorry, okay got it, knock knock?

M: Who’s there?

I: Wait, no…

 

The 3rd Attempt:

I: Oh! Knock knock, got it! It’s knock knock, who’s there, they say a name and then they say “that name who” and they say that name…. Maybe? It’s a grammatical, oh it’s slipping my mind right now, wait! knock knock?

Me: Who’s there?

I: To

M: To who?… too whom! Ah I get it!… That took a lot of trial and error

I: Yeah it did

 

While, at least by the third attempt, the joke is essentially self-explanatory, attempting to  trick the person who answers second into using a nominative case interrogative pronoun (who) rather than the grammatically correct accusative case (whom), perhaps the amount of difficulty it took to tell the joke accurately suggests a limited usage of technically precise grammar in every day life.