Author Archives: AEBH

Initiation Ritual in Bakeries

Nationality: American
Age: 77
Occupation: retired
Residence: los angeles
Performance Date: 4/22/17
Primary Language: English

Informant worked in the bakery belonging to his grandmother and father to put himself through college.  While there, he encountered this initiation rite that every new employee had to ‘pass’ before they were officially one of the guys.  It is a variation on the idea of snipe-hunting, or the naval ‘steaming the deck’ trope.

Informant: We used to give the new guy a ten gallon cream can and send him three blocks down, a new guy when he came, started, and send him three blocks down to another bakery to get a can of steam.

Interviewer: Why?

Informant: Just kind of initiation.The milkcan, the cream can, the thing weighed like forty fifty pounds, they had to be heavy or they’d get dented.

Interviewer: Empty?  Thirty pounds empty?

Empty. Ten gallon can? It’s huge, it’s made of metal, I used to carry em around full.  By the time the guy figured out it was a, I guess, a hazing thing, he was one of the family, you know.

European Rat Shit

Nationality: American
Age: 16
Occupation: student
Residence: Encino, CA
Performance Date: 3/30/17
Primary Language: English

Informant is sixteen years old.  He is a high school student and an athlete.  It is likely that this name for an otherwise fairly simple and low-stakes card game is an attempt by the young players to feel tough and cool, and to identify with a more sophisticated group by using language they perceive as being more adult.  The interviewer was unable to find any evidence of a game by this name, but the informant swears that most people his age know about it, or at least boys on sports teams, as he has played it with kids from other football teams, who recognized the name immediately.

Interviewer: Do you know any games, like something your friends taught you?

Informant: Well, there’s European Rat Shit.

Interviewer: What’s that?

Informant: It’s a card game, you play with, like, a normal deck, no jokers.  It’s similar to Slap Jack, which is where you each put a card down and you slap it when a Jack comes up and you get all the cards in the piles and the object is to get all the cards. But in European Rat Shit, each face card, ah, you, the other person—each face card you put down, the other person has to but down a certain amount of other cards and if there’s a sandwich, which would be one card, a different card, and the same card as the first card, then you slap it and you get the hand that’s down, or if there’s a double, same thing: same card on top of each other and you slap it the whole hand is yours.

Interviewer: Why’s it called that?

Informant: That’s a good question. Can I google it? There’s a lot of names for it that I know. European War, um, hold on. ERS, which is just, like, abbreviation, I guess. Three. I know three names. Counting European Rat Shit.

Jinxes: How they work

Nationality: American
Age: 16
Occupation: student
Residence: Encino, CA
Performance Date: 3/6/17
Primary Language: English

Informant: So if someone says a word at the same time as you say a word, and they say jinx right after, then you cannot speak until someone says your name three times. There are very strict rules to this, too. If you continue speaking after you say the same word and the other guy says jinx right after, like, say you’re trying to jinx me and I’m saying a sentence, and you jinx me but I continue talking while you say jinx, that counter-acts it.

Also, lemme think. You can’t jinx on a song or a jingle if, like, you’re both singing along or something, or if you’re repeating after someone. If you get in a jinxout, where you both say it at the same time and you keep saying it, you can kinda, um, you can stop the jinx by saying any word during that sequence, like you both say but and then you both say jinx, whoever says a word, that, like, breaks it. I think that’s all the jinx rules. Oh. They gotta say your whole name the same way all three times or it doesn’t count.

Interviewer: Same person has to say it?

Informant: No, anyone can say it.  If three different people say it or if, like, if two people say it and then one person says one syllable and someone else says the other one, you’re, like, you’re still–the jinx is still over ’cause they said it.

Interviewer: What happens if you break the rules?

Informant: I dunno. I haven’t tried yet.  You just, you don’t.  Ahhh, if I do, I’ll tell you, okay?

The sixteen year old interviewer had just been jinxed at a family dinner when this was collected, and the interviewer took that opportunity to ask some questions about the rules surrounding the concept of jinxing as practiced in the informant’s family.  His mother and younger sister are the other major participants.  It seems to be, perhaps, a playful but instructive way for adults to demonstrate basic principles of etiquette and teach a younger person to listen before speaking and perhaps discourage impulsive or disruptive speech.

Newts as Yardstick for Ecosystems

Nationality: American
Age: 61
Occupation: Private Chef
Residence: Santa Monica
Performance Date: April 22, 2017
Primary Language: English

Interviewer and informant were on a hike together, and in a pond at the base of a waterfall, found quite a few newts feeding.

Informant: This is great, this is really good to see.  Newts and I think salamanders and a certain kind of frogs—what’s that class? They’re not reptiles, but they’re something equally repulsive?

Interviewer: Amphibians?

Informant: The amphibians—if they disappear, the salamanders or newts and a certain frog, I know this from my friends who lead wildflower walks and go snow camping with me, it’s a sign of, I’ll say degradation of the natural habitat, of the environment, which could be drought or pollution or non-native plants and animals wreaking havoc on the natural environment. Water pollution, absence of water, because they’re amphibians, it’s water-related stress. It’s all very logical but it’s the kind of thing you don’t know until someone tells you.  Also they’re poisonous.

The Black Angel

Nationality: American
Age: 35
Occupation: Playwright/Market Research Survey Engineer
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 3/17/17
Primary Language: English

Informant: Hey, while we’re talking about college towns, did I ever tell you about the black angel of Iowa City?

Interviewer: No.

Informant:  Um, so it was a big deal when I was in college, there’s not much to the one I’ve actually heard, it’s just that if you ever kiss a virgin in front of this black statue of an angel in the cemetery near the university in Iowa City, it’s face will turn white.

Interviewer: Did you ever?

Informant: No one ever has!

 

This local legend/joke might be construed as emphasizing anxiety about sexuality and, for women at least, the fine line between being considered prudish and being considered promiscuous; for young men, perhaps anxiety about being considered manly enough.  The informant heard this first from a college girlfriend of his, and apparently it was not uncommon for couples to go kiss in front of the statue on a dare–playful proof of adulthood in the liminal space of college, when many students find themselves no longer protected by parents but also not quite independent.