Monthly Archives: May 2019

A Sleeper Receives Nothing But Dreams

Nationality: Canadian-American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Toronto, Canada
Performance Date: 4/11/2019
Primary Language: English

Text:

A sleeper receives nothing but dreams

Context: The informant learned this phrase from her mother, who was a Croatian refugee who fled to Canada. The informant likes this phrase because it encourages her to work hard to achieve her goals.

Analysis: “A sleeper receives nothing but dreams” encourages individuals to actively participate in achieving their goals rather than simply dreaming about them or “sleeping.” This is how the informant interpreted the proverb, as her mother would tell it to her at times when she was not actively participating in extra-curricular activities in high school or was not doing her homework. In this sense, “sleeping” is any activity deemed to be a leisure activity or not actively pursuing an end-goal. At the same time, however, this could be interpreted as a positive thing for sleepers, as dreams are something necessary to achieve success in the first place.

 

Ghost stories at Christian camp (Dolly)

INFORMANT: OOH girl I got a ghost story. You’ve probably heard it. I feel like everyone’s heard it.

 

ME: What is it?

 

INFORMANT: The Dolly story.

 

ME: Oh my god yes I have heard it! Tell me your version.

 

INFORMANT: Okay so according to the story there was once this little girl who went to the carnival and played some carnival games. They were those carnival games where you can like win stuff, ya know? So anyway this little brat played the game and lost and pitched a fit, so the carnival guy gave her this beat ass doll that only had two fingers and I guess she was like “whatever it’s cute” and took it home and named it Dolly. So she started noticing that her doll kept ending up in different places than the places she would leave it, and she asked her parents if they had been moving her doll around and they said no. The one time she came home and Dolly had not only moved but also had a knife in her hand. I guess she was an idiot or something because she didn’t think this was weird and kept the doll. Then one day her mom went missing and no one knew where she went. The girl went to the doll for comfort and noticed that it had gained a finger. The next day, while she was at school, her dad went missing. Once again, Dolly had gained a finger. The next day she came home from school early and walked in and found Dolly standing over the house keeper with a bloody knife. When she took the knife from Dolly she noticed that she had gained another finger. This was the moment when she realized that Dolly gained a finger every time she killed someone and that her parents weren’t missing. They were killed by Dolly.

 

Background

The informant learned this ghost story at Christian camp from one of her friends. She said that they often exchanged ghost stories right before going to sleep for fun, even though it was really scary. This story was her favorite one to tell because she thought it was so creepy. She also thinks that this story is the reason she now has a strange fear of dolls.

 

Context

The informant is a college student at the university and grew up in Dallas, Texas.

 

Thoughts

The idea that a doll could be possessed is a common theme in folklore. This perversion of something that typically symbolizes childhood is exceptionally scary in nature because childhood is suppose to be comforting. It’s scary to think that even the things we might turn to for comfort could also be evil. This type of scary story can also be seen in horror stories about haunted houses or evil stepmothers. It is terrifying to think that the things that should keep us safe could actually be the things putting us in danger. If you can’t turn to your childhood toy, your house, or your mother for comfort, then what can you do? Additionally, because the girl received the cursed doll after she misbehaved, it could have also been a way to scare children into behaving correctly and encourage them to not act so spoiled.

 

Salt Over the Shoulder: Faeries or Demon?

Nationality: American
Age: 59
Occupation: Writer
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 10, 2019
Primary Language: English

Piece:

KE: “If salt spills, you pick up a little pinch of it and throw it over your left shoulder. It’s for the faeries because you don’t want to make them mad you spilled the salt so you are giving them some. But there’s another meaning I know where there’s a Demon behind you and you are throwing salt in his face.”

Context:

The informant grew up knowing the faerie version from her mother, since she was little. Someone else told her the demon version when they saw the informant throw salt over her shoulder in college.

Analysis:

This is a simple practice that takes on two wildly different meanings. The faerie version gives the person the chance to “share” the spilled salt, whereas the demon version requires the person protect themselves after making a mistake. It makes sense that a parent might tell their child the faerie version, if they were even aware of the two different versions. As the informant’s mother comes from a Wales and Irish lineage, I wonder if the faerie version stems from there, or pure chance as to which version the informant’s mother learned first. This practice goes back to the idea of the world needing to be in balance– so if salt spills, you need to correct it by using the salt for a purpose, either sharing with faeries or protecting against demons. In the faerie version, a child might be encouraged to spill salt in order to feed the faeries, whereas the demon version makes spilling salt a punishable offense.

Turn Over A Teacup For Lost Things

Nationality: American
Age: 24
Occupation: Music Industry Assistant
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: March 29, 2019
Primary Language: English

Piece:

JG: “For as long as I’ve been alive, whenever I’ve lost something and especially when that something was lost at my grandma’s house, my grandma would flip a teacup over. And it would always get found. It was your last resort. Sometimes that would be the end, sometimes I would keep searching. But I would always find the thing I was looking for.”

I: Would you stop looking after you turned the teacup over?

JG: Most of the time, yes.

I: Why a teacup?

JG: I don’t know! But that’s what she always used.

Context:

The informant learned this practice from his grandmother, although his mother also used the teacup to find lost things. The informant said he did not know why it was a teacup in particular that got turned over, but that it was always that type of cup. The practice has been in his family for as long as he can remember. He still does it now at his own place.

Analysis:

Turning over a teacup seems like a random gesture and a last resort, but in many ways it conveys a sense of magic/ belief in a higher power that somehow the turned over cup will result in the lost item being found. Flipping over the teacup represents the nature of lost items– something is not how it’s supposed to be, it is not in place. By putting the teacup out of place, the lost item can return to being in the place it is supposed to be, a sort of balancing of energy and things.

Urban Legend for Screenwriters

Nationality: Israeli-American
Age: 23
Occupation: Writer's Assistant
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 14, 2019
Primary Language: English
Language: Hebrew

Piece:

DD: “This was happening in the 30s or the 40s. Jack Warner of Warner Brothers got annoyed that the writers on contract came in at 10,11, hanging around. He decided there would be a new rule: all the writers on contract would act like everyone else, clock in at 9 am and clock out at the end of the day. And this policy was enforced for a while. Time passes and Jack and an old pro screenwriter -I can’t remember his name, let’s call him Saul- with hits under his belt, go to a preview in Pasadena. After the preview the audience would fill out cards about what they thought. Warner and screenwriter are looking at cards. And the cards are terrible. Warner says “Saul, what happened?? Where did we go wrong??” And Saul with dead pan sincerity of the natural comic replied “I don’t know Jack. I clocked in every morning at 9 am.”

The policy was dropped.

Context:

The informant was told this story in college by a screenwriting professor. It was told in the context of talking about how writers work. The informant said the story resonated with him as he could never write on a dictated schedule.

Analysis:

As a Screenwriting major, this story makes me laugh and confirms part of my identity as a writer. The idea of clocking in and out seems very secondary to the much larger task of writing and creating worlds from nothing. It is a point of pride with many employed writers that they do not have a “typical” job and the old pro screenwriter’s response to it proves a point. Of course, a screenwriter who wasn’t a pro might not be able to give such a witty response to a superior, but having the legend of this screenwriter provides a source of comfort and humor for screenwriters who perhaps have not ‘made it’ yet. To me, this story is an urban legend for screenwriters and artists.