Author Archives: Katie Chorao

Lentils on New Years

Overview

The informant is Italian-American and lives in Staten Island. She describes her family’s New Years tradition of eating a cup of lentils. They are not cooked in a stew or spiced up at all. Rather, they are boiled plainly and then taken like a shot out of a cup. The informant says that lentils “bring good luck on new years,” and represent luck and prosperity among Italian people. So, taking them like a shot is a purely pragmatic tradition over a culinary one. 

Thoughts

Lentils are a type of bean, and beans are a well-documented symbol of fertility and prosperity. Therefore, it makes sense for them to represent similar values in Italian folklore. I wonder if every family eats them so pragmatically, or whether other families cook them into entire meals.

As Smart As Bait

Overview

The informant is 50 years old and from Riverside, California. She describes a saying popular in her fishing-obsessed family: “as smart as bait”. 

Context

As stated, the informant grew up with a father who took her fishing frequently. He was the main perpetrator of this saying, jokingly using it during fishing trips. However, it was also used in regular life, it became adopted by all of her siblings and her mother, and they used it whenever they wanted to call something stupid. According to the informant, “Fishing bait is the least desirable thing to be in the world. Not only does it smell bad, get pierced by a hook, and eaten by a fish, it looks like absolute mush. There is nothing impressive or intellectual about bait, so equating another person’s intellect to that of bait is a major insult. That said, the tone of voice that this phrase is said in is usually very lighthearted and joking, so it doesn’t come across like a major insult, but instead like a light tease.”

Thoughts

I’ve heard a lot of folk sayings that use the form of a simile to insult. “As smart as bait” reminds me of other sayings like “smart like a tractor”, “dumb as a doornail”, etc. What’s interesting to me is that both “as smart as bait” and “dumb as a doornail” mean the same thing, despite one using the word smart and one using the word dumb. Irony goes a long way here, but it’s interesting that an insult is assumed of both.

Eating the Goldfish

Overview

The informant is 50 years old and from Riverside, California. She was in a sorority in college and she describes one initiation ritual that her sorority practiced on new members: asking them to swallow live goldfish. While they didn’t have to complete this act, swallowing the goldfish was widely understood to accelerate their acceptance in the sorority community.

Context

Swallowing goldfish is an urban legend of sorts, whispered about by children and seen in gaudy comedy movies. I asked the informant why she thinks that her sorority embraced this tactic, and she explained that it added interest and excitement to their initiation ritual. It gave new members something to gawk about and to tell stories about, which really helped cement them as members of the sorority. She said that while it was gross and weird, it also served its function.

Thoughts

This reminds me of other outrageous hazing rituals, which are mostly practiced by fraternities these days. Humiliation, toxic consumption of alcohol, physical exhaustion, and downright gross activities are bad, but for the reasons the informant alludes to, also… kind of good? While recent stories regarding hazing put the practice in an overwhelmingly negative light (for which I do not object), they also act as effective initiation rituals. Once you’ve been hazed, you feel like a real member of the greek organization.

You Don’t Know Shit From Shineola

Overview

The informant is 50 years old and from Riverside, California. She describes a saying that her mother, also from Riverside, frequently said: “You don’t know shit from Shineola.” 

Context

Shineola was a popular shoe polish manufactured in the United States in the 1940’s. Thus, it was very well known among American families, like a household brand. To say that someone couldn’t tell the difference between Shineola (a thick brown substance) and shit (also a thick brown substance) would be to question their judgement and intellect. When asked the context that this saying was used in, she replied that “It was always used negatively or condescendingly. Essentially, you were calling someone stupid. This could be a joking insult, or sometimes it was actually used to sound nasty to someone else.”

Thoughts

This phrase is interesting to me in that it is distinctly American by virtue of the brand that it includes. Other sayings call upon more generic objects, like an apple, tree, pencil, etc, but calling out Shineola makes this phrase only understandable to an audience that is aware of Shineola– in essence, an American audience. 

Send It

Overview

The informant is 21 years old and from Long Island, NY. He describes a saying he and his friends use often, which is “send it”. He describes the contexts in which this saying is used, which usually include the moment when someone is making a decision. To “send it” is to go full-speed ahead, to fully commit to a decision, and to ignore the consequences or risks of committing to this decision.

Analysis

I asked the informant about the meaning and origin of this phrase. He said that he and his friends had spoken about it before, and while they’re not sure of the exact origin, it reminds them of the confidence needed to send risky/bold text: you make the choice to send it, and you press send without looking back. 

Thoughts

I’ve heard this phrase a lot throughout high school and university, too. Interestingly, it’s used by every social group I’ve interacted with within my age group, but I’ve never heard someone more than five years older than me use it. I think it’s funny how much discrepancy there is between small age brackets, which we can see in the extreme difference between Gen Z and Millennial lingo. I love using the phrase “send it” because it embodies the spirit of youth, similar to the phrase “YOLO” (You Only Live Once). At this point, I want to live boldly and take risks, so I choose to send it!