Author Archives: Craig Lynch

Automobile Seating Arrangement Ritual – American

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Determining where someone sits in a vehicle can be complicated. There are only so many seats in any given vehicle. The driver of the vehicle is usually known ahead of time. This is usually the owner of the vehicle. If the vehicle belongs to someone not there or nobody cares who drives then the person driving will be the first person to shout “driver.” The front passenger seat is usually the most coveted position because it is usually always up for grabs. This seat goes to whoever yells “shotgun” first. The worst place to sit is in the middle of the back seat. This is called sitting “bitch.” If you don’t care where in the back you sit as long as it’s not “bitch” then you have to shout “no-bitch.” Sitting “no-bitch” is either behind the driver or behind the passenger. Usually nobody cares where in the back they sit as long as it’s not bitch.

The rule used to be that you can call out a seat as soon as everybody is out of the building. At first it didn’t matter, but then people kept calling “shotgun” like at the beginning of a party or something and it was like cheating. Eventually it changed to where you can’t call it out until the car is within view of everyone and everyone is out of the building. It won’t count if you do it when you can’t see the car or if everyone that’s gonna be in the car isn’t there. If you call a seat it only counts for the current point A to point B. If you gotta make multiple stops where people get out of the car, like a gas station, then seats are up for grabs whenever anyone gets out of the car.

Bryan told me that calling “shotgun” is a very big deal in Cleveland. Because he often travels with several friends at a time, nobody wants to have to be squeezed in the back. If they do end up in the back, they prefer not to be stuck in the middle. Even if a person does not care where they sit they try very hard to avoid sitting “bitch.” Sitting “bitch” is seen as shameful and embarrassing. People that constantly sit “bitch” are usually made fun of constantly. Bryan says that an exception to this is if the person sitting bitch is smaller than everyone else and volunteers because they do not take up as much space. Often girls sit “bitch” simply because the guys tend to be larger. In these cases they are not made fun of and usually people are grateful for their “sacrifice” and show them the respect they deserve.

If multiple people call “shotgun” at the same time they usually have a Rock, Paper, Scissors best-of-three match to determine the true victor. Bryan told me that calling “shotgun” is a way to see who is on their toes, or paying attention the most. I think it is a way to define a sort of hierarchy when in transit from place to place. This hierarchy is constantly redefined but there will always be those who seem to succeed at calling “shotgun” more frequently and those who call it less frequently. It is not uncommon for the person sitting “bitch” to call “shotgun” at the first opportunity in order to regain their dignity in the eyes of their peers. It is a way of temporarily structuring peer groups that allows members to temporarily possess positions of power as well as positions of degradation.

Here is a humorous sketch of shotgun calling:

Shotgun Song on YouTube

Folk Speech – American

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When communicating with her best friend and other friends in her clique, Nateka speaks as fast as she possibly can. Her friends are able to understand everything she says and she in turn is able to understand everything they say.

I asked Nateka why she and her friends speak so rapidly with each other and then return to a normal tempo when speaking with everyone else. She says that it developed over time. At first they spoke quickly only to interrupt each mid-speech but over time they just kept talking faster and faster until they were speaking so fast that no one outside of their group understood what they were saying.

Another contributing factor, according to Nateka, was television and especially the rise of “Valley” talk. “Valley” girls tend to speak quickly. Nateka said that her friends were already speaking quickly by the time they were exiting Elementary School and all throughout Middle School during the mid to late 90s. Seeing other girls speaking rapidly on television helped prolong her habit of speaking quickly and also increased the speed of her words when conversing with her close friends.

She says that everyone had their “thing” in school and speaking rapidly was the “thing” that belonged to her and her group of friends. I think it was a defining characteristic that helped them establish a sort of group identity. Upon hearing her speak rapidly to me, as she does among her friends, I had no idea what she said until I slowly replayed the dialogue in my head. It is certainly not something I would be able to manage on a regular basis. For her and her group of friends it is completely normal and, according to Nateka, they prefer that people don’t understand what they are talking about.

An example of Nateka’s mode of speech can be seen in the television series Blossom. Jenna Von Oy’s character Six Le Meure is the best friend of the main character Blossom. Six is extremely quirky and almost always speaks extremely fast. She speaks so fast, in fact, that Blossom has to constantly grab her by the shoulders and tell her to slow down, at which point Six usually tries to speak slowly but ends up increasing speed until she is speaking quickly again. This is very much the way Nateka and her friends speak to each other, except they all speak quickly unlike Blossom who speaks at a fairly normal speed when conversing with Six.

Here is an clip of Six from the television show Blossom:

Six on YouTube

Prank – American

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When you are drinking you should never fall asleep with your shoes on. If you do then you are fair game for anything.

Corey told me that this tradition is common all across the campus of University of Findlay. Anytime there are parties and people have a little too much to drink and fall asleep with their shoes on they get messed with. He tells me that nothing is off-limits when it comes to dishing out a punishment to the offender. A common punishment is drawing on the person’s face with a magic marker. Usually this is done with an erasable marker but permanent markers are often used. Another common punishment is to spray shaving cream all over the person’s body. If the person is fully clothed when they fall asleep they may be stripped down to their underwear. Another, more interesting, punishment involves multiple individuals who have fallen asleep in shoes. These individuals are often positioned in compromising positions. All of these pranks can involve photography as a means of recording whatever sort of punishment gets dished out.

One of the more extreme examples Corey told me of involved a guy who had drank too much and passed out underneath a table with his shoes on. A partygoer happened to have a taser in her possession and was more than happy to lend it to one of Corey’s friends who proceeded to tase the sleeping individual in the leg multiple times. The offender was so intoxicated that he never actually woke up. He only moved his leg a little each time he was tased, other than that he remained sleeping and motionless. The incident was filmed and shown to the individual the next day. He was angry at first but upon learning that he neglected to remove his shoes he became more understanding and even appeared to be more angry at himself than the guy that tased him in the leg.

Corey says that this practice is continued in order to teach people not to drink more than they can responsibly handle. If someone plans on going to sleep they will have the wherewithal to remove their shoes first to avoid being disturbed. If, on the other hand, that person is too drunk to function and simply passes out anything can happen. Getting screwed with, while sleeping with shoes on, usually causes a person to drink more responsibly next time. Corey told me the first time he heard of this rule was at the very first college party he ever went to. The first time he witnessed someone getting messed with while sleeping with shoes was the very same night. The offender in this instance was given a shaving cream beard, mustache, and eyebrows. I also believe it is a way of warning college students against drinking too heavily. It is a way for them to experience a direct consequence of heavy drinking that is not nearly as severe as other possible consequences that can arise from drinking too heavily. This is a way to prevent that.

Superstition – South Korean

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When Andrew was a young child he was left handed. He would use his left hand to do everything from eat to draw and write. His mother frowned on him using his left hand every single time she observed it. When he would try to hold his fork with his left hand she would slap him on the back of the hand and scold him. When she caught him holding crayons in his left hand she would slap them out of his hand and tell him to pick them up again using his right hand. This continued all the way to kindergarten. Once Andrew began writing frequently he was caught holding his pencil in his left hand frequently. He was scolded and punished for this behavior every time he was caught.

Over time Andrew had to slowly learn how to use his right hand because of getting hit every time he got caught using his left hand. He eventually became proficient in writing with his right hand and subsequently lost the ability to use his left hand very well. He is now completely right handed and it is all because his mother did not want him to grow up using his left hand.

Andrew told me that being punished for using his left hand was one of his earliest childhood memories. His mother believed that being left handed was connected with evil. The left hand taboo can also be seen in Middle Eastern societies. In Iraq, I learned that the left hand is used in place of toilet paper when going to the facilities. In Iraqi culture it is an insult to wave at someone with your left hand or even shake hands with the left instead of the right. This notion of the left hand being bad is prevalent in Korean culture.

Andrew says that he does not have a single relative, living or dead, who is left handed. Whether or not some of them may have been converted, like he was, is a fairly strong possibility, according to Andrew. Andrew’s mother projected her cultural beliefs about what is “normal” onto Andrew.  Even in American society the left hand is still considered “different.” It is not discriminated against the way it is in Korea, but it is still viewed in a somewhat suspicious light. I believe that the belief that the left hand is connected with evil or at least some negative connotation still exists today and although it is not often discussed it still remains a belief that many people hold in the back of their heads.

Video Game Celebration – American

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When playing the popular XBOX game Halo, after a person kills their opponent he or she should go over to the corpse of his opponent and repeatedly crouch above him. This is known as “corpse humping.”

Nicholas told me that this is done frequently when playing Halo online. It is a sign of disrespect to one’s enemy. He says it is done by him and his friends as a way of celebrating their kill and not so much to disrespect someone. Sometimes people get highly offended when they see that their corpse is being humped. This can lead to shouting matches, nasty texts, or revenge killings (within the game of course).

The act of corpse humping is also sometimes referred to as tea bagging, which is when a person puts his testicles into the open mouth of another person, much like dipping a tea bag into a cup of hot water. The corpse humping mimics that act and that is the reason so many people take offense to it. I asked Nicholas when the first time he learned about corpse humping was and he told me it was the first time he played an online deathmatch in Halo. After being killed, the person that killed him humped his corpse for an extended period of time while taunting Nicholas via text about how he was being teabagged. Nicholas fought fire with fire by killing and teabagging his assailant.

He later started doing it as a way of celebrating an especially challenging duel, but his opponents still frequently take offense to having their corpses humped. I think corpse humping is a way to assert dominance over one’s opponent. When a person’s corpse is being humped they are completely helpless. They have to wait a certain amount of time for their character to re-spawn (reappear). During this time they are humiliated and helpless. By frequently humping corpses one is making a statement about his superiority and challenging others to take him on.

Here is an example of teabagging in Halo:
Halo 3: The Bag Boy (Machinima)