Author Archives: Chung Chan

Duct taping prank

My friend is a student at Cal Poly Pomona.  But when he was in high school he was in the marching band.  His high school’s marching band had a particularly strict sense of hierarchy, and so freshmen who were just joining the band were expected to “stay in their place.”  This is an account my friend told me, of a freshman who was particularly unruly and how upperclassmen retaliated during band camp, a week in which the band members train and get to know each other:

“There was this one kid, who, um… who was a freshman, and he was pretty much just a general asshole.  Um, he didn’t show up to practice, he’d cut in line past seniors to get to food and stuff like that, and… he was even worse to people who were, like, of his year.  And… yeah, so basically he’d go around stealing people’s stuff.  And so, one of the seniors were like… “So um,yeah, this is too far so we need to get back at him.”  So we took duct tape and we duct taped his sleeping bag… until there was more duct tape than actual sleeping bag.  And… yeah, basically it was like… justice.  But kind of like, vigilante justice or something like that.”

[“Do you feel that pranks like this kind of enforce the hierarchy you guys have? Like, if people fall out of line…”]

“Yeah, for sure, ‘cause generally if you are being really… arrogant, and, you know, just a general douchebag… we try to put you back in your place.”

My friend definitely thinks that this disproportionate retribution was effective in perpetuating the cultural hierarchy of his high school band.  The duct taping tradition in that particular community far predates my friend’s account.  He remembers it as one of the more common gestures used in disciplining freshmen.

There’s a certain discontinuity betweem the nature of the prank and the values it’s supposed to reinforce.  Band requires a lot of self-disicipline and respect of bandmates/directors, yet this prank is demeaning to the target.  I think this irony can be explained by the way band’s hierarchy works.  As my friend said, the targets of these pranks are usually unruly or arrogant freshmen.  So, as a form of reciporcity, the upperclassmen return acts of disrespect with more disrespect.  On the other hand, it seems likely that duct taping is something that amuses high schoolers because it demeans the target.  There’s a constant struggle of being “better,” and strict hierarchies like band help to reinforce that way of thinking.

Mafia (a game)

My sister learned a card game called “Mafia” from her speech and debate teammates.  The game requires a playing deck and is often played in groups of six or more.  It’s particularly popular with high school and some college students (who often learned of the game in high school).

A player acts as the narrator and gives each player a card.  A king, queen, and jack must be distributed.  A player with the king card plays as the mafia.  A player with the queen card plays as the nurse.  A player with the jack card plays as a detective.  A player with any other card is a regular citizen.  Players do not reveal their cards to each other.

The narrator asks all players to put their heads down, and then asks the mafia to put their head(s) up and designated a player to “kill.”  The mafia raises their head and points to another player.  The narrator notes the decision and asks the mafia to put their head(s) back down again.  The narrator then asks the nurse(s) to put their head(s) up.  They are asked who they want to save.  They can point to any player, including thesmelves.  The narrator asks the nurse(s) to put their head(s) back down again.  The narrator asks the detective to put his/her head up.  The detective can point to a player and gesture to the narrator that they suspect this player is the mafia.  The narrator will nod or shake their head to affirm/deny their hunch.

The narrator asks all players to put their heads up.  The narrator is then tasked to create a story in which the targetted player dies, or a targetted player is in danger of dying but is saved by the nurse (depending on if the nurse makes the right decision to save the right player).  If the player dies, they have to re-enact the death the narrator devises, even if it’s incredibly ridiculous.  The story may reveal the identity of the nurse if the nurse saves the targetted player.

After the events unfold, the narrator allows for the players to vote for one person to be executed.  Players must decide amongst themselves and can accuse anyone (they don’t know anyone’s roles).  When they’ve come to a decision, the narrator describes the accused person’s execution.  After that, the narrator will reveal whether or not the mafia are still on the loose.  The game ends when either the mafia manage to kill everybody else, or if the other players successfully figure out the mafia and execute them.

My sister really likes playing this game because it has a lot of room for creative and persuasive tactics.  There are no rules to the narration (other than ‘make it entertaining’), and there are no rules as to what kinds of evidence players can present to accuse one another.  The game also doesn’t allow you to trust anyone, which makes the action suspenseful.

I think the game’s fostering of mistrust among players is particularly appealing to high school and college students because there is still a degree of uncertainty as to the full stories/personalities of your friends.  The game can reveal certain personality traits of  a player depending on if the players play with a personality true to themselves.  And in competitive environments like high school and college, this game allows for a sanctioned and cathartic experience of being unashamedly competitive against your own friends, if it means survival/success in the game.

My sister mentions that some narrators do not need the targetted player to re-enact their death.  This particular version that my sister describes (with re-enactments) is probably also appealing to her group of speech and debate competitiors, because speech and debate requires either persuasive or performative skills.

Cantonese Wedding Comb Tradition

My mother said that when she was about to get married, she learned of a tradition that takes place before the day of the wedding.  Her older sister combed her hair the night before, and said the following lines:

一梳梳到老 (yi shu, shu dao lao)

二梳白髮齊眉 (er shu, bai fa jing wei)

三梳兒孫滿地 (san shu, er sun man di)

四梳有田有地 (si shu, you tian you di)

Each line is delivered with a stroke from a comb.

The first line translates to, “one stroke, stroke until old age.”  The first stroke comes with a wish for the bride-to-be to have a long life.

The second line translates to, “two strokes, your brows become white together.”  The second stroke wishes for the bride-to-be to have white eyebrows at the same time her husband does.  In other words, this stroke wishes for the couple to grow old together.

The third line translates to, “three strokes, children and grandchildren cover the ground.”  This third stroke wishes for the bride to have many children, and children who survive to raise grandchildren.

The fourth line translates to, “four strokes, you’ll have fields and have land.”   This wishes for the wife-to-be to own property.

There are other significant gestures in this ritual as well.  The reason why my mother’s older sister combed her hair was because she was happily married, had children, and had a home.  Elder members of either family can comb the wife-to-be’s hair so long as they’re happily married and generally have experienced the wishes of this combing ceremony.  Widows or sickly wives can not perform this action.

After the combing ceremony, the wife-to-be can not sleep and must preserve the hair until the wedding.

There’s a lot going on in the gestures of this combing ceremony.  A happy marriage and future is very important, so it would make sense that this combing ceremony takes place.  The stressed need for a happily-wedded wife to perform this ceremony shows that theres is a form of contagious and homeopathic magic going on in the performance.  Since homeopathic magic follows a “like produces like” rationale, a happy wife combing a wife-to-be’s hair hopefully produces another happy wife.  On the other hand, the wife combing the wife-to-be’s hair acts as a form of transferrence.  She is transferring her happiness and successful marriage to the wife-to-be.

My mother noted that the fourth line was a recent addition.  With expanded rights and social roles for women, the wish for her ability to own property became very relevant.  This shows that the incantation and the practice of combing the wife-to-be’s hair is adaptive to changing circumstances.

Dia de los Reyes

My friend is a student at the University of Southern California.  His mother’s side of the family is Mexican, and his father’s side of the family is Serbian.

My friend’s family still celebrates a number of Mexican traditions.  According to my friend, one of the most important holidays in Mexico is Dia de los Reyes, the Day of the Kings.  The day celebrates the three kings who visited Jesus in the manger and gave him three gifts.  The reason behind the holiday is religious – my friend is not religious yet he still celebrates this holiday with his family.

There’s very specific foods that people eat on Dia de los Reyes.  During the day, children receive presents (my friend puts it as “second Christmas on a smaller scale).  In the evening, however, the family eays a big meal.  The main course is not specific, but my friend has often eaten meat like pork and turkey.  The desert of the evening meal is specific – it’s a cake called La Rosca de Reyes.  It’s representative of Jesus’s crown of thorns – it’s a bread ring that is decorated with mainly fruits and sugar.

It’s traditional to also hide baby Jesus figurines within la rosca de reyes.  Whoever gets a piece with a figurine inside of it becomes obliged to organize next year’s celebration.  In religious communities that celebrate it, the figurines are also tied with a tradition of dressing a statue of Jesus.  My friend’s family isn’t religious, so they just expect the person who gets the figurine to organize next year’s Dia de los Reyes.   He says that his family’s celebration of this is not related to the religious event but related to just having a day to bring the family together.

My friend’s account of Dia de los Reyes shows how folklore can be reworked to fit different circumstances.  I think it’s unsurprising that his non-religious family would celebrate a religious holiday if it meant that it gave a chane for a family get-together.  Now that my friend is in college, days like this would probably be more meaningful for the family, as he won’t be around as often.

The Come Carne Ants (flesh-eating ants)

“When I was… in high school, I lived in Costa Rica for six months… and… we decided to live by the beach.  And when you live by the beach for six months, you have to go to the beach every single day…  because, you’re never going to ever have the opportunity again.  Forever… So we, we go to the beach every single day, and that led to us knowing all of the secret beaches, like none of the tourists would be there.  Um, and this one day… it was a weekend, we spent the entire day at this secret beach… we’re the only ones there.  No one else… in sight, for the entire day… and being on this beach… forever… eventually, I had to go use the restroom.  Now, even though it was an abandoned beach with no one in sight except for my family, I, I felt like it would be improper to use the ocean.  And so, I ran over to this nearby bush, then again it was an abandoned beach, there was like nobody nearby, so I walk over to this bush… And I…  I really needed to go, so I started running straight there, I’ve been having a lot of fun, I’m not paying much attention, running straight in this bush to hide and then… Well, jus- just the week before… ehm… one of, one of the… one of these security guards for the apartmen we were living in had told us this story of the ‘come carne’ plant… Now, if you know Spanish, you know come carne is the stupidest  names ever, it means ‘eat meat’ in Spanish… and I guess more accurately translates to flesh-eating.  Now the plant itself doesn’t eat flesh… it’s, it’s like this rose and it has these giant thorns, but way bigger than a rose, HUGE thorns.  And… it, it’s a weird thorn because it has no tip, it just has a hole at the top instead, so it’s not pointy.  It just looks like a thorn, with no… no top, just this hole, and inside this thorn lives a colony of ants.    Now these might actually be the come carne ants, one of them’s named come carne, it’s probably the ants but I thought it was the… the plant that was named, so…  Now these ants don’t actually eat flesh, they eat the sap produced by the plant, inside of its thorn… and in return they protect the plant from any goats that try to eat it.  So the goat would come over, wanna nibble on this bush, out jump these ants that will bite craters of flesh off the goat’s nose and the goat would run off, screaming in pain because it’s one of the most painful things ever now our security guard was telling us this, and was like ‘You’ve never felt pain… until you’ve been bitten by these come carne ants!’   Now… I really had to go, so I wasn’t thinking, and I definitely wasn’t looking at this bush… as I was relieving myself on it, completely naked, you know, pants down… sw-swim trunks down… And he was right, there is no pain until you’ve, you’ve been bitten by a come carne ant… and… and so yeah, they bite off these chunks of flesh, and I actually have a scar right here on my arm, ‘cause one of them got on my arm, it’s been several years now so it’s like… so it’s almost gone, especially since I’m tan, but you can see that tiny white bit…”

[“Oh, please don’t tell me your…”]
“…Oh, it’s fine, hahaha…  they were definitely like… only one got my arm but there were a whole lot more elsewhere… so… you know your first reaction is like, when you’ve got flesh eating ants on you is to… get them off, by jumping into the ocean to get them off but I REALLY, REALLY had to go, and so I finished up and then I ran into the ocean and got them off, and then my pain tolerance level for the next… few months, was like, through the roof, I couldn’t feel like, anything… I felt like a superhero afterwards because… yeah… you don’t feel pain like that… on an everyday basis.”

My friend is an Interactive Media and Games major at the University of Southern California.  He went to high school in Colorado, but as he says in the above story, he lived in Costa Rica for a while.

The story deals with an “urban legend” of sorts, of flesh-eating ants in the Caribbean.  I tried to look up solid evidence for flesh eating ants in Costa Rica but could not find anything documented.  Because of the uncertain veracity of the come carne ants this makes my friend’s story a memorate (though he does have scars on his arms to prove that something did, in fact, rip off a piece of his flesh).

My friend noted that he’s told this story many times since the incident.  I think it’s really popular because of it’s outlandish premise.  Going to beaches everyday is an unusual circumstance, and becoming so familiar with beaches that you know where the secret beaches are is something different as well.  The fact that the security guard did warn my friend and his family about ‘come carne’ ants helps make a really good story (almost like an informant at the beginning of marchen that warns the protagonist of something that would lead to serious consequence).  The idea of flesh-eating ants that can rip off your flesh, and the image of someone falling victim to them during urination is hilarious and outlandish.  Since he’s told this to a lot of friends in the United States, I think the location of Costa Rica is far enough to be slightly exotic, which makes this story feel more true… as if these ants were an alien form of ants that exist on some tropical island, on abandoned beaches that you shouldn’t go to after you’ve learned this story.  I think my friend aims to make it seem alien too, especially when he describes the thorns of the plant in which these ants hide.