Author Archives: Scott Gilman

Practical Joke: Eating an Orange Like a Monkey

Main Piece: 

Informant: “It comes from my dad. I remember distinctly, I was probably four and he said ‘I’m going to show you how to eat and orange like a monkey.’ And this is how you do it. You take an orange and you orient the stem perpendicular, and you cut it in half so that you see, you know, the typical cross-section if an orange with all the sections in a radiant circle like a sun. So, then you pick up- you do this to each side of the orange -you pick up the half of the orange and you take your little four-year-old teeth which grow into sixteen-year-old teeth and you go around the orange, you dig the flesh of each section out with your front teeth. Particularly good when you still have your front teeth but you don’t have your side teeth because you’ve lost them. So, you scoop the orange meat- pulp -out, going around the perimeter of the orange. Then, what you do is you take the orange and you squish it in half. So, you know, it’s a straight line on the top and you’ve got a semi-circle underneath it. Does that make sense?”

Collector: “Yeah.”

Informant: “So, you squish it in half and you hold it up to your mouth and you drain the orange juice that you can get into your mouth. So, then you take it down and then you fold it the other way so you still got a straight line, but now you’re taking the rest of the pulp- you understand what I’m saying? Like you fold it the other way and you do the same thing; you squish and you get all the orange juice out of the other half. And then what you do- now it’s all pliable, so you take your orange half, which is mostly peel now and some pith, and you turn it inside out and you eat each of the like sectional pith pieces one by one. And that- and then you do it to the other side of the orange -and that is how you eat an orange like a monkey. And I always did this my entire childhood.” 

Background:

My informant considered this something almost unique to her family, though she said that she thinks her father learned it from a kid he went to high school with. She described this as something of a practical joke with practical benefits for her father: 

“And then, about two years ago- I’m fifty-two, so when I was about fifty I said to my dad ‘You know, Dad, I’ve now fifty years old and I have never in my entire life seen someone eat an orange like a monkey except your children.’ And he said ‘Well, I learned it somewhere and as soon as I realized I had five children and as soon as the first one- as soon as I stopped peeling an orange for one through five then the first one would be hungry again. I knew I had to teach them how to eat an orange by themselves. Fortunately, I recalled how to eat an orange like a monkey, and I taught you all, and that’s how I escaped a life of peeling oranges.”

My informant says she did not proliferate this practice because she only had two kids- she didn’t mind cutting up two oranges.

Thoughts:

This practice is difficult to interpret. Its marketing seems geared towards kids- eating like a monkey is fun for kids -so I wouldn’t be surprised if this was originally intended as a trick to get kids cutting their own oranges. However, the informant’s father learned it from a peer, not as a parenting trick, and applied it that way himself. I would tentatively suggest that this is folklore originating from children, given Jay Mechling’s analysis of how children’s rituals are often highly complex and absurd but treated with enough solemnity to follow the exact labyrinthine instructions. This also strikes me as a possible practical joke. Presumably, the goal would be to keep a straight face as you forced someone else through an intricate and increasingly ridiculous process. This seems likely as something taught by one high schooler to another.

Work Slang: Rate-Limiting Factor

Main Piece: 

“One of my favorite expressions that we use in my industry… It’s a common phrase that’s used in chemistry, in a chemistry classroom. Because I work with a lot of scientists, they use it for our projects, and it’s the expression ‘rate-limiting factor.” So, a rate-limiting factor in chemistry is, you know, whatever causes the reaction to go the slowest, but a rate-limiting factor on a project might be that fact that we don’t know what the budget is or that we haven’t gotten a site up and running.”

Background:

My informant is a freelance medical writer for a variety of pharmaceutical companies. She describes the industry as a relatively enclosed one, but one in which you can bounce between companies. She’s heard this slang term only in her industry but all around within it. It was a term she’d only heard in chemistry classes before entering her field. She presents it as a catch-all term for anything slowing a project down.

Thoughts:

Occupational folk groups are bonded by the fact that they share the same day-to-day experiences and ostracized from each other by judging each other on merit of skill. Robert McCarl states that new entrants into an occupational folk group are subject to scrutiny from the “in-group.” I believe that this work slang, the understanding of which is based on a certain education background that the majority in the industry share, is a way of creating an in-group. By using a scientific term, this in-group could be able to scrutinize new entrants to see if they have the proper knowledge base.

Children’s Song: Hitler is a Jerk

Main Piece: 

“Whistle while you work!

Hitler is a jerk!

Mussolini bit his weenie

Now it doesn’t work”

Background:

My informant said that this was a popular limerick when he was a little kid in New England. It was something that kids would sing at recess. Some teachers didn’t care, but it wasn’t a limerick encouraged by any authority. My informant interpreted the limerick as simple playground fun, with people having more fun with the biting of the weenie than the anti-Nazism.

Thoughts: 

This is an example of two popular phenomena in children’s folklore. First, it’s an example of nonsensical material in children’s songs. This nonsense, Jay Mechlings argues, is meant to confuse adult observers, affording the normally powerless children some measure of power by being “in the know.” Second, this is an example of body experimentation/gross-out humor. This kind of “biting weenies” humor is popular in children’s rhymes. It’s a way to safely explore adult topics on children’s periphery. For another version of this, see Sherman, Josepha. “Gopher guts and army trucks: the modern evolution of children’s folk rhymes.” ELO: Estudos de Literatura Oral 6, 2000. 212.

Folktale Creature: The Squonk

Main Piece: 

“He’s just sad and ugly and I love him. Oh boy, so, the squonk is basically this kind of urban legend, like cryptid creature that’s certainly meant to explain like those weird noises hunters hear in the night. And the thing is that the squonk cries a lot because he’s ugly, and that’s what those weird noises are. And that’s it. He just cries a lot because he’s ugly and no one wants to be the squonk.”

Background:

My informant had a strong personal connection to the squonk that was mostly based on finding the concept delightful. She is from an entirely different area than the squonk, which supposedly exists in Pennsylvania. My informant discovered the concept online, but does not recall exactly where. As mentioned above, she says it is meant to explain strange sounds hunters hear that sound like crying.

Thoughts:

Folklore is normally emblematic of the culture in which it exists. For example, modern American folklore tends to have an emphasis on the future and the brightness at the end of the tunnel- proverbs such as “all’s well that ends well” or “the ends justify the means.” Americans tend to have an emphasis on happiness and hope to the exclusion of other sentiments. It’s interesting, then, that there’s this specifically Pennsylvanian creature that is so unbearably and irredeemably ugly that all it does is cries. This kind of hopelessness is not normally emblematic of American folklore. Two possible explanations fit within the framework of America as a mostly hopeful folk group. First, this could be a bizarre way of putting down the other. The hunter is not the one crying in the woods because they’re ugly- it’s the noise possibly frightening them that is. Second, this could be an example of an unconsciously counter-hegemonic folk belief. The majority of America is full of blind hopeful folklore, but we believe in a creature that lives in the woods and cries because of how depressed it is over its hideousness.