Author Archives: Claire Nickerson

Folk Metaphor – American

Nationality: Caucasian with Irish and Italian ancestry
Age: 29
Occupation: English Student
Residence: Tujunga, Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 19, 2011
Primary Language: English
Language: Conversational Spanish

The informant learned the following folk metaphor from a friend in college:

“Gayer than a tree full of monkeys on nitrous oxide”

The informant uses this figure of speech “around friends who are gay and know that [he’s] not gay-bashing.”

The informant feels comfortable using this figure of speech around his gay friends because he considers that “in general, gay people are really laid back about their orientation.” He calls the folk metaphor “kind of silly and over the top” but “not horribly offensive unless it’s used in an offensive tone.”

If we take as a given that the folk metaphor is indeed “silly,” it is not surprising that it involves monkeys, which seem to be seen by Americans as fun or amusing—“a barrel of monkeys” is defined on Urbandictionary, a website that allows users to define slang terms, as “a standard of comparison for describing how much fun something is” and Amazon.com sells joke books called Barrel of Monkeys Super Silly Joke Book and Cheeky Wee Monkey Joke Book. Nitrous Oxide, while generally used as an anesthetic, also has the side effect of causing temporary hysterical delirium and is nicknamed “laughing gas,” which would explain why it is being used as part of a silly scenario. In this case it seems safe to say that the folk metaphor is implying that gay people are a source of amusement.

The folk metaphor is obviously widespread; it is pictured here on a commercially produced T-shirt: http://www.zazzle.com/gayer_then_a_tree_full_of_monkeys_on_nitrous_oxide_tshirt-235612046927597732

It can also be found in Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s novel Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch (151).

Sources:

Cusa, Nick. “Barrel of Monkeys.” Urban Dictionary. 25 April 2011 <http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=barrel+of+monkeys>.

Gaiman, Neil and Terry Pratchett. Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch. New York: Harper, 2007.

“Nitrous Oxide.” Britannica Concise Encyclopedia 2010. Encyclopædia Britannica. 25 April 2011 <http://www.answers.com/topic/nitrous-oxide>

Ritual – Massachusetts

Nationality: Caucasian American
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: University of Southern California
Performance Date: April 20, 2011
Primary Language: English

The informant speaks below about an annual ritual held at her high school:

“This is ‘Head of School Day.’ It’s, um, something we have at Phillips Academy Andover and, um, essentially, um, we were on the trimester system. So in the winter trimester, it’s just, it’s . . . if you’ve ever been to Boston in the winter, it’s not a very fun place. So I guess kind of it’s a way to, like, as a kind of way to help out the students they’d have what you call ‘Head of School Day,’ where the head of school would just randomly call off a day the night before, so—probably at 7 or 8 o’clock so that most kids had gotten most of their work done, so that, like, if you didn’t sleep in you could actually have, like, a full day off. What’s really interesting about it is that, um, how she would announce it was that she would walk into the, um, the what’s-it-called . . . the cafeteria? We had, like, four cafeterias, places, and she would walk in with a hockey stick and she would raise it up and everybody would just go crazy and it was just, it was just this huge thing where everyone was just like, ‘Oh, when is it going to be?’ And y’know, people had, y’know, theories of like they could nail it down to the exact day, or like if, y’know, it was supposed to be like negative twenty out, then she would call it then so she wouldn’t have to call it a snow day, because they didn’t have snow days. Even if there was three feet of snow there wasn’t a snow day.”

“I liked it. I thought it was a bit of a cop-out because, like, they wouldn’t have snow days and people would be driving for, y’know, 45 minutes and have a good drive in like 3 feet of snow and like, that was like their snow day. But I liked it.”

This school must have been a boarding school for the Head to be able to talk to the students directly in the evenings. I wonder how the poor parents would feel about this ritual if it were not a boarding school, having to make plans at 7 or 8 in the evening for their kids to be taken care of the next day during deep snow. This calendrical ritual, like the winter solstice holiday, clearly didn’t take place on the same date every year. The holiday, aside from keeping teachers from having to drive in deep snow, seems like a way to celebrate the idealized Western idea of childhood—children should be able to go out and play once in a while.