Author Archives: olord@usc.edu

Haunted Dorm/Former Morgue

Context:

Will Lord is my brother. I visited him at his University recently. He attends the University of the South, also known as Sewanee. Given its regal name, one would assume that the school is rich in tradition and folklore. One would be correct. The school was established in 1857. Given its small student body, many feel compelled to join fraternities and societies which each have their own collection of folklore. The school itself is full of legends. While walking around campus, I recorded him talking about famous locations, legends, etc.

Transcript:

Will: This one here, this is where I lived freshman year. It was a morgue way back in the day. Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t have any ghost stories from there but a ton of people say they’ve heard things or seen ghosts or just had sleep paralysis.

Interpretation:

This is another example of a vague hauntedness. Will could not point to exactly what goes on within the space, but assured me it was haunted. Like so many folk stories about haunted spaces, it once dealt with death. We often hear of a haunted space once being a burial ground, a morgue, a hospital etc.

Getting a Cold with Wet Hair

Context:

Madeleine Hall is Junior at USC, studying Communications. When I set out to explain folklore to her, for some reason my mind went straight to folk remedies and I gave her several examples of these, and then got into general folk beliefs around sickness. Obviously, my niche explanation led to this piece of folklore she then provided.

Transcript:

Madeleine: There are two parts of it, though. The first part is my Mom used to say that you can’t go outside with your hair wet because you’ll get a cold when it was cold out, or really hot out, doesn’t really matter, you’ll just get a cold. Uhhm, annndd, the other one is that you can’t go to bed with your hair wet, which really makes no sense, uhm, but now I dry my hair before bed every night, because I’m not gonna go to bed with my hair wet.

Interpretation:

This is something I investigated to see if there is any scientific truth to it. It seems that there is no science behind this claim, but I had also heard it before. Many people had, it seems, because after typing only a few words into Google, Google auto filled the rest of my search. Like drinking eight glasses of water a day, or the above wet hair folk belief, many people often hear these things over and over. With the Internet, people can finally seek out their validity.

Movies on Christmas Eve

Context:

Leighton Lord is my father. Given this relation to me, I was interested in procuring some folklore that both of us participated in, but obviously from his perspective as he and my mother were the ones who set the traditions that we followed. Another unique perspective he has is being instilled in Southern traditions after twenty two years spent in Columbia, South Carolina following his marriage to my mother, a native South Carolinian. He grew up in Delaware, and was fascinated upon arriving in the South and witnessing the obsession with tradition and particularly talk about ancestors. I collected several pieces of folklore from him during a recent trip he made to Los Angeles. He currently practices law.

Transcript: 

Owen: Can you talk about our Home Alone tradition? From your perspective.

Leighton: I guess from my perspective, we wanted to have traditions, have traditions that were fun, that everyone enjoyed. I think everyone in our family enjoys movies. It was kind of the easiest thing. Kind of doing the same thing every year. Forced us to be in the same room…you know…the older you get. It’s harder now to do things like that.

Interpretation:

Small family traditions like this one are interesting because as a kid the context of most of your life is your family and your household. So our tradition of watching the movie Home Alone seemed a uniquely Lord tradition to me. Of course, as I grew older and spent time around more and more people, I learned that many families watch a Christmas themed movie on Christmas Eve and many specifically watch Home Alone. It was also interesting hearing about this tradition from the man who started it. As you can tell from his rather general explanation, he simply felt a need to establish a tradition of some sort on a date where every family seems to be doing something together.

Office Folk Speech for Being Busy

Context:

Leighton Lord is my father. Given this relation to me, I was interested in procuring some folklore that both of us participated in, but obviously from his perspective as he and my mother were the ones who set the traditions that we followed. Another unique perspective he has is being instilled in Southern traditions after twenty two years spent in Columbia, South Carolina following his marriage to my mother, a native South Carolinian. He grew up in Delaware, and was fascinated upon arriving in the South and witnessing the obsession with tradition and particularly talk about ancestors. I collected several pieces of folklore from him during a recent trip he made to Los Angeles. He currently practices law.

Transcript:

Owen: Can you give me some lawyer folklore? Like some water cooler kind of talk? Lingo, that kind of thing.

Leighton: Well there’s kind of this competition to always be the busiest. Like it’s embarrassing to not have anything to do. So you run into someone, elevator, whatever, and you ask how they’re day’s going. And in the office it’s usually something like “I can’t breathe with all this work” or “client’s got me in the weeds.” Stuff like that. Just complaining about how busy you are all the time. But I think most lawyers would go crazy if they weren’t. I think it’s American.

Interpretation:

I have also noticed this folk speech in college. Often, even if I am having an enjoyable week, I’ll catch my self complaining about work to someone merely to relate to them. It sort of feels like a ‘we’re in this together’ sort of mentality. Also, I find it interesting that my father included the bit about his particular work experience being a more general American thing. There could be truth to this, as laziness is looked down upon in the US.

 

Law School SubReddit Terminology

Context:

Isabella Estrada is studying history at the University of Southern California. She is graduating this year and is in the process of applying to/hearing back from law schools. This was clearly on her mind as the first piece of folklore she gave me dealt with law school applications. She was born and raised in Torrance, California.

Transcript:

Isabella: So, there is a subreddit on the website Reddit that’s called law school admissions, and it’s just essentially a forum where people who are applying to law schools get together and complain and discuss admissions and scholarships and the like, and so, with like any other subreddit, there’s like a specific language that we use, and to indicate, or like another form of congratulations that people use when someone says they got into a law school is “go get some ice cream.” So it like, it serves in place of congratulations. And it’s just like a congratulatory phrase.

There’s also, instead of, if you get rejected, instead of saying you got rejected, you say you got “dinged.”

Interpretation:

Reddit is infamous for its specialized language. Even “subreddit” requires an understanding of the website–meaning a category within the website. Internet culture has created its own language in many cases, and these two examples show how visitors to the page use these euphemisms to deal with serious decisions that impact their future. The point of the subreddit is to find support amongst others who are going through the nerve wracking application process, so these silly phrases could help to temporarily lessen the hurt of getting rejected, and likewise celebrate those who are admitted, but not overly so as to hurt the feelings of those being rejected.