Tag Archives: parents

Scary Hide and Go Seek

“D” is a 19 year old female student at The University of Southern California. She is a Chemistry major and interested in pursuing Pharmacy after college.  She is Vietnamese on both sides of her family and describes herself as very close with her sister, whom she shares many Folkloric traditions with. She played soccer up through high school and is currently active in the rugby community.

 

 

Transcript:

“D: So when we were little we used to play hide and go seek tag, kind of, but we were supposed to in bed. All four of us, our bedrooms are in the same wing of the house and so, we had to play when we were supposed to be sleeping and it was all dark and we had to be completely silent. So what we would try to do instead of actually just hiding, we would find the darkest clothing or blanket and just crouch in a corner and pretend we were like a rock or the wall. So the majority of the time it started off as hide and go seek, and  we’d try to find the other person, towards like, as we got older, it was like ‘who can scare the other person to get them to scream the loudest so they can get caught’.

Me: So the point was like, to not wake up your parents but still be able to play?

D: Yeah, yeah!

Me: Do you remember when you first started playing?

D: My brother and sister were older so they started playing first, I would say I was about six, so my sister was eight, my brother was ten.

Me: So from that other piece of Folklore you told me about before (titled “Siblings tapping though walls to talk to each other “, also in this database), you would tap on the wall with you sister to communicate without your parents knowing, she would come over there or you would go over there and you would try to scare the shit out of each other by pretending to be  rocks and stuff?

D: It started out as hide and go seek, than it was like ‘scare the shit out of each other!’ ”

 

Analysis:

Coupled with “D”s tapping through the walls to communicate with her sister, as featured in the other piece of Folklore mentioned above in bold, this game appears to be an attempt to extend play past when was dictated by her parents. By attempting to scare each other, they both acknowledged that they were in a situation they were not supposed to be in, and also implemented it into their game play, building a game around the environment provided to them. The use of scaring both allowed implementation of the taboo aspect of the game, while taking advantage of the lack of awareness provided by the dark, as the dark is conventionally very scary for children. “D”s being pulled into game play despite being one of the younger siblings allowed to bonding to take place by showing the younger sibling she was allowed to participate in her form of play.

 

Trot Trot to Boston

The informant is a 22 year old college graduate that is now working at a software company in Madison, WI. He grew up in Upton, Massachusetts until he left Upton to go to college in Los Angeles, California. . Upton is a small (population 7,542) town about 45 minutes south-west of Boston. He grew up in a loosely Catholic household with both of his parents and two younger sisters (3 years younger and 7 years younger).

I first heard this rhyming song before I thought to collect it, approximately 2 years ago when he jokingly performed the piece for me. I asked him to repeat the rhyme and asked him a few more questions about it on the date specified below. The song/rhyme is usually said by parents to their small children. He mainly remembers his father saying the rhyme to him and his younger sisters when they were small enough to easily fit on his lap but old enough to sit upright (i.e. they were not newborns).  The words are as follows:

Trot trot to Boston,

Trot trot to Lynn,

Watch out little baby,

Or you might fall in!

 

The rhyme is said while the child is on the adult’s lap. Overall, the rhythm of the rhyme is reminiscent of a horse’s gallop, which makes sense when you take the “trot trot” as referring to horses (not the child) trotting. As each syllable is said, the adult moves their legs by lifting their heels, creating a physical movement for the child that is very much like a what would be experienced during a horse ride. As the adult says the last two words (“fall in”), the adult moves their knees apart and lets the child drop slightly as if they are falling. The adult, of course, does not let the child actually fall and usually has their arms around the child to make sure this does not happen.

Both Boston and Lynn are cities in Massachusetts and are only ten miles apart, making a horse ride between them a feasible idea. The route between them is also near the coast, which may mean that “falling in” refers to falling in some sort of water or marshy land. The informant remembers his father saying this rhyme when they were being silly, so it is not an attempt to seriously scare the child by letting them think the adult would drop them. This plays with the feelings between of protection needed by children. By saying the child could fall, letting them fall a little bit but preventing them from completely falling to the ground, the parent is effectively saying “I’ve got you” without having to say those words.

There are several variations of this rhyme that use different cities in Massachusetts, some of which are published in a book called Trot-trot-to-Boston: Play Rhymes for Baby by Carol Ra. (the ISBN for the 1987 version is 9780688061906)

Though the informant does not have children or any nieces or nephews to tell this rhyme to, he does subject his girlfriend to the rhyme if he is in a particularly silly mood.

Evil eye sayings

Context: The informant is a grandmother of 8 whose parents were originally from Afghanistan but settled in Pakistan. She also lived in Saudi Arabia for many years and has a working knowledge of Farsi, Arabic, and Punjabi along with her native Urdu. She says that a common thing to say when you see someone  in new clothes, or looking particularly beautiful; or when someone has very good fortune in (for instance) an exam or a job; or, especially, with children and new babies; is

“Nazr-bad-door” or “Chashme-bad-door”

 

 

 

 

 

 

which, word-for-word, means “look-bad-far-away” or “eye-bad-far-away”, but translates to, “May the Bad Gaze/Evil Eye stay far away from you.”

Analysis: The purpose of this little saying is basically to keep away the Evil Eye, which the informant says can be put on someone if they are envied or have something that others covet (eg, good grades or good health). When the Evil Eye is put on you, you may fall sick, fail in your job or school, lose your money, etc. Children are especially susceptible because they are often the center of attention, especially in the informant’s Pakistani family, and so if someone merely looks at a child with selfish or ungracious thought in their mind, the child could fall ill or have an accident, etc. It is thus important to remember to praise God when you see something beautiful and not be jealous or ungrateful, and this phrase is a way to remind oneself of that, and also to express the desire to protect someone from others’ ill gazes as well. The informant said all this as what people “used to believe”, implying that the traditional phrase is kept even though the specific belief may have been altered or abandoned altogether.

“The wolves are coming!” 狼來了!

“So a long long time ago, there was a kid… he has to release the sheep at home.  So everyday he would run up the top of a mountain, watching the sheep eat grass and the like.  So everyday is like this and he thinks it’s really boring.  When he was bored, he would look everywhere and when he looked down he would see a lot of farmers, they’re there tilling the soil.  So the boy thinks, “Eeeh?  I’m this bored, why don’t I fool them first!”  So, really loudly… then… so he thinks, “how do I fool them?” And he loudly yells “Save me!  Wolves are coming!” So… the farmers at the foot of the mountain go, “Eh?  The kid on the mountain is yelling for help… he says there’s a wolf,” so they immediately put down all their work, run up the mountain to save the boy.  So the boy is watching the farmers, so he sees the farmers running up the mountain and thinks it’s really funny, and very entertaining, like watching them do a show or something, so he… then the farmers run up and are exhausted, panting, and when they reach the boy, the boy happily claps his hands “Yay, yay, I fooled you guys!  I fooled you guys, there wasn’t a wolf in the first place, seeing you all run up, so cute!”  So the farmers say “Huh, this kid, playing with us like this,”  so they unhappily descend the mountain.  So okay, an amount of time passes, the boy still has to go up the mountain every day to tend to the sheep, and he sits and thinks “Ughh, so boring… last time was pretty fun though!  Again!”  So for a second time… then… he tries it again, yelling “Save me, save me!  Wolves are coming, the wolves are coming and carrying all my sheep away!  Save me, you better come quickly and save me!”  Then the farmers, at first, see him yelling like that and have… have… hesit-hesitate, have some hesitation, thinking “Hm?  Is this kid… is it true this time?”  But the kid, seeing the farmers… he calls the farmer and sees they are ignoring them and continues, acting really afraid and yelling “Save me, save me!”  The farmers don’t want to risk having wolves eating the sheep, so at the end the farmers decide to run up the mountain and save the kid, and they run, run, run, run up the mountain and the kid, again, goes, “Yay, yay, you’re all dense, you’re all silly, hahaha!  You’re all really silly!”  So this time the farmers are really angry… “This kid really is naughty, so ill-disciplined, right?”  “He’s like this, tricking us, wanting us to abandon our work to run up and save him, he… it turns out he’s joking with us.”  Then, an amount of time passes, and the kid goes up the mountain to tend to the flock again, and this time he’s really unlucky, there really is a wolf coming.  When the wolf is actually coming, it carries away his sheep, bites his goat…his sheep.  This time he’s actually terrified and screams “Save me! Save me!  Farmers below, hurry up and save, there’s really a wolf!  Faster, save me!”  Then the farmers hear it this time and think  “This kid is fooling us again?  He’s already fooled us twice… let’s not go save him.”  This time the farmers decide to ignore the kid.  Unfortunately, this time, a wolf really does come down.  So the wolf ate… carried away all the sheep and wounded the kid as well.  This kid, at this time, is really regretful.  He thinks, “why did I have to lie in the past to trick people?  Now that I’ve tricked people, they no longer have trust, they don’t trust me, so this time when I really have hardship, no one is willing to help me.”  So this story teaches children to be honest, don’t lie; if you lie, no one will trust you, and if there’s really danger, no one will save you.”

My mother heard this story from her mother as a child.  Her mother would tell her this story, usually like a bedtime story, and teach her the lesson of not lying.  My mother and her sisters would often rely on their mother to tell stories like this to pass the time.

At first, I didn’t recognize the story because the title was “Wolf is coming!”  in Cantonese (狼來了!)  But when I heard the story I recognized it as a version of the folk story, “The Boy Who Cried Wolf.”  I think the difference in the titles comes down to the fact that “狼來了!” is catchier (long loi liu!) and that “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” does not have a particularly smooth Cantonese translation.

In this telling in particular, the “kid” is referred to in Cantonese as siu peng you (xiao peng you, 小朋友), which refers to kids in general but is also understood to refer to boys more often than girls.  Perhaps this is because most other versions of the story feature a boy.  I also found it interesting that the kid sees farmers, instead of being part of a village and yelling to the villagers for help.  The comments of the boy towards the farmers are likely different with each performance.  The “hahahas” were added as a sort of flavor by my mother in this particular performance of the piece.

In other versions I’ve heard, the resolution is adverse but not particularly violent; for example, the sheep would run away at the sight of the wolf.  I was surprised that this version, which my mother learned as a child, has the kid injured and the sheep eaten.  There is also no seen with the farmers teaching the kid a lesson – the lesson comes from the kid reflecting on his mistake.

A variation of this tale in literature can be found in B.G. Hennessy’s children’s book, The Boy Who Cried Wolf.  It seems that there’s yet another variation in this authored text;  at some point the boy’s friend gets involved.  The information of this book is below:

Hennessy, B. G., and Boris Kulikov. The Boy Who Cried Wolf. New York: Simon & Schuster for Young Readers, 2006. Print.

Snacks and Playing outside with Dad

In the following, my informant details a tradition she and her sister shard with her father growing up:

When I was little we always had to do our homework before we went outside, but before that, my dad would come pick us up from school and he’d always make us snacks like it was, my dad made snacks, and whether it was nachos, or whether he made, like, I don’t know leftovers from the night before that we weren’t going to have for dinner, he’d always make them for us, and then, he never played with us but he’d always, if my mom wasn’t home, he’d let us play outside with our friends before we did our homework, which would make my mom so mad, so we did that.

The following tradition shows the dichotomy between the father and mother parent relationship common in many American households. Whereas the Mom tried to keep order and discipline, by requiring the informant finish her work before playing outside, the father would make the informant snacks and let her play outside earlier, thus, although incurring the mom’s wrath, winning the reputation of the benevolent father, a situation many parents have to deal with, where a mom is trying to be strict and a Dad, who often spends less time with the kids, will come home and release the children from the Mom’s imposed discipline.