Author Archives: ejrobins@usc.edu

“Life isn’t fair.”

“Mom, like, really doesn’t like the idea of proverbs, so I wouldn’t tell her this is one. It definitely comes from her being an English Professor and having to read lots of student stories where the just write the same really cliché stuff and like try to sound deep or poetic by repeating things they’ve read, which I agree would but super frustrating. But, anyways, she doesn’t like proverbs, but there’s this one phrase she’s always saying. And it’s “life isn’t fair.” Which, I mean, I don’t know if it’s really a proverb, but it’s something a lot of people say in response to stuff. It gets really annoying, like, you know, sometimes you just want to complain about something, but she uses it to shut you up. I mean, like, maybe life isn’t fair, but maybe it should be.”

I asked one of my informants if she had any proverbs she used frequently, and she told me that she never uses proverbs. She hates how they become a crutch for people who are too lazy to try to actually articulate what they want to say precisely. While I accepted her argument, I found it a little suspicious that someone could go entirely without using any proverbs. So, I decided to get a different perspective from her daughter, who revealed she was perhaps as not a purely original as she thought. This just goes to show how essential folk-speech is to language. After all, almost all of our formative language-learning comes from hearing grown-ups talk while we are babies, not from any sort of formalized guide—although many books to exists to help children learn, and when we are older, we grow our skills and vocabulary by reading complex works. Even if we actively try to avoid simply repeating sayings, it is impossible to avoid picking up phrases.

Latkes

COLLECTOR: “Do you know how to make latkes?”
INFORMANT: “I mean, it’s like really easy.”
C: “So, how do you do it?”
I: “You just take a bunch of potatoes and an onion—or three or four if you’re my dad—and put them through the spinny grater thing in a Cuisinart. And then you can wring it out with a towel, and mix it with flour, and salt, and an egg, and I think sometimes baking powder. And then make… patties… and you fry them. In like a bit of oil—not too much.”
C: “How long do you cook them for?”
I: “Just, like don’t burn them. I mean, I like mine kinda crispy. And raw potato is disgusting. Don’t try it.”
C: “And do you just eat them plain?”
I: “Yes… I do. Remember to put them on a paper towel to soak up the oil, first. And most people like applesauce or sour cream or other weird stuff on them, but why?… I’m a potato purist.”

I decided it would be interesting to see if I could collect religious folklore from someone not particularly religious, so this recipe comes from teenaged girl, who is ethnically Jewish, but neither practicing nor bat mitzvahed. I simply asked her to explain different components of how she celebrates Chanukah. The cooking of latkes has become so ingrained in her as part of the Chanukah tradition that, from her nonchalant description, it seems an almost thoughtless process, now. The folkloric quality of this traditional recipe is clear, though the lack of any measurements, heats, times, or anything quantifiable in the instructions; a major part of being able to cook them properly is intuition gained from seeing and helping others cook them over and over again.

The Traditional Chanukah Game of Dreidel – Onion Modification

INFORMANT: “So, dreidel is like the game you play at Chanukah, where you spin the dreidel—it’s like a four-sided top—and bet gelt [chocolate coins] and the different sides do different things. Do I need to, like, explain all of those?”
COLLECTOR: “No, you can skip to the story. People can look that up.”
I: “Okay, sure. So it was, um, six? No, like, a lot of years ago. We were having a Chanukah party with a bunch of not-Jewish friends, and had lit the menorah and were playing dreidel, and my brother’s best friend sucked at it. I mean, it’s a lot of luck, but he lost like all his gelt in like two rounds, but he wanted to keep playing with the rest of us, so we had an onion in the middle of the counter, leftover from making latkes, and he asked if he could bet that to get back in. And we were all like, “sure, whatever,” because we felt bad for him having to sit there. And anyways, he bet this onion to get back in and ended up winning the game. So, as a victory—like to celebrate—he decided to eat the onion, to… honor it or whatever. He’s really weird. And, he takes a huge bite out of this onion, like an apple, and just can’t stop crying for twenty minutes. But now, because of this, every Chanukah when we play dreidel, whoever wins has to take a bite of an onion before they can eat their gelt, to like even it out.”

I decided it would be interesting to see if I could collect religious folklore from someone not particularly religious, so this tradition/ritual comes from teenaged girl, who is ethnically Jewish, but neither practicing nor bat mitzvahed. I simply asked her to explain different components of how she celebrates Chanukah. This specific ritual practice puts a personal, non-institutional twist on something essential to the celebration of the holiday, the game of dreidel, which although is not mandated by the religion, is quite widespread amongst Jews. The onion is way of inserting personal significance, into a traditional ritual which would otherwise hold little meaning for my informant. It is also a way to remember a story—which happened so long ago in her childhood that the details are surely blurred—that has become almost a family legend.

Tradition of Patterning Chanukah Candles

“So, every night of Chanukah, you put one candle in the menorah for the number of the current night, starting on the right, as well as the shamash, which you light the rest with, from left to right. Everyone does that… But in my family we always tried to do something cool with the candles themselves. My parents always bought those really cheap Chanukah candles from, like, the grocery store or somewhere that come in different colors like blue, white, yellow—I think it’s actually all the colors plus white—so my brother and I would always try to arrange the candles in some sort of pattern every night, So it was aesthetically pleasing, you know? Sometimes the whole menorah would be, like, one color, except the shamash. Or it would alternate colors, purple-orange-purple-orange, (actually, I think there were never green candles, um,…) but, yeah, we took a lot of art classes as kids, and were also both kind of OCD, so I guess that came out… We tried for complimentary colors and things… The challenge was always to plan ahead so that every night could have a perfect design. And we’d make sure that the last night could always be only blue and white—the Jewish colors. I dunno, it was just a kind of way to make it more interesting, the tradition, that is.”

I decided it would be interesting to see if I could collect religious folklore from someone not particularly religious, so this tradition/ritual comes from teenaged girl, who is ethnically Jewish, but neither practicing nor bat mitzvahed. I simply asked her to explain different components of how she celebrates Chanukah. This specific ritual practice puts a personal, non-institutional twist on something essential to the celebration of the holiday, the lighting of the menorah, which is mandated by the religion. It is way of inserting personal significance—in this case, a love of patterns, creativity, and mathematics—into a traditional ritual which would otherwise hold little meaning for my informant.

“Pogchamp”

“Well, it comes from games—I mean, my friends and I all play Overwatch [a competitive online team shooter] and at the end of every game it awards one player with Play of the Game. And everybody likes getting that, but they also all know it’s a computer deciding, so it doesn’t really understand the nuances of strategy and stuff, so the Play of the Game it says was never really the most important thing someone did in the match. So, um, “Pogchamp” is just Play of the Game [POG] and champion mashed together. But it’s kind of in that gray area of half satirical, like you can call someone a pogchamp when they do something cool or impressive, or like hook up with a girl or something, but it also really can mean that that person is taking their accomplishment too seriously or being obnoxious about themself, so it takes on a double meaning quickly, but also it’s only ever used in a friendly way, like if I actually wanted to call someone out for bragging I’d just say it.”

This piece of folk-speech was shared by a high-school friend of mine whom I called him to ask if he could think of any folklore from or our time in together. The gaming slang term “pogchamp” came up. As his explanation of the term suggests, like a lot of folk-speech, its precise definition proves difficult to nail down, seeing as using it relies heavily on the participants in the conversation and the conversation’s context. “Pogchamp” is much more universal than a lot of specific slang words, because of it near-universal adoption by the English-speaking online gaming community. The popular video game streaming website Twitch even has a “pogchamp” emoji users can type in chats. However, we see that the term has a special meaning for my informant’s specific group of friends, as well, demonstrating its multiplicity and variation.