Author Archives: Katherine McCormick

A Cookie A Day

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 12th, 2013
Primary Language: English

This is a joke passed on in the family of my informant, and dates back to his grandfather. It plays on the saying “an apple a day keeps the doctor away”. His father would have a cookie for breakfast every day, saying that he didn’t need a doctor or an apple and that he would rather have a cookie. He died in his fifties from heart complications.

This has now become a joke in their family; every time someone feels ill, a family member would recommend that the person start eating cookies for breakfast, and gave rise to the adapted saying in their family that “a cookie a day keeps the doctor away”.

Camp Song

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 12th, 2013
Primary Language: English

“The final campfire, we would sing a song, well, it’s been a while so I forget how it goes, but so our camp was on one side of the lake and on the other side of the lake was a Jesus camp. Apparently that’s what it was called, I dunno, but that’s what we called it. We kind of liked to mess with them a little bit, I dunno if we thought that we were better or something, but it was just a fun thing to do for us during camp. And so what we were singing about was really, I mean it wasn’t malevolent at all it was just a fun camp song, but the last line of the song was “AND NOW HE’S DEAD”* and we would just scream it across the lake. And we had all this fire, so, it would look at all scary.”

*At this line, all of the campers would shake their arms up in the air.

This was a custom enacted by the children at my informant’s camp. It always occurred at the end of the summer, a last huzzah of sorts. The religious camp across the lake was different from the camp my informant attended; it’s possible that there was something of a rivalry, or perhaps they just didn’t get along, but the screamed last line was a definite intentional goading. More importantly, though, it’s a tradition at the camp that unites the campers against the ‘others’ across the lake, and most likely played into numerous jokes at the other camp’s expense. It would be done on the final night to re-cement this impression and the unity among the campers before they had to disperse, ending the period of the summer to start a new one.

Dream Catchers

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 12th, 2013
Primary Language: English

“This is from second grade, and we were learning about native Americans in class and–actually it might have been earlier, but, uh, some early elementary school grade, my teachers told me that native Americans made dream catchers. And so we spent one art class making dream catchers, because they told us that if we made them and hung them by our beds we wouldn’t have nightmares anymore. And so I made one and hung it over my bed. It did not work.”

This is a native American tradition, often taught in schools as representative of their beliefs in some way. It’s supposed to be protective, saving the person who has one and hangs it over their bed from having bad dreams. It is also partially belief oriented–my informant did not believe in its abilities, and thus it did not work for him. The dreamcatcher’s main body is a circle, in which are threaded strings in a generally intricate pattern. This web presumably catches the nightmares, keeping them from reaching the person who sleeps beneath it. It is also often decorated, sometimes with feathers hanging down towards the sleeping person.

It occurs fairly frequently in popular culture when one is referencing native Americans. Its protective ability was actually demonstrated (with a few tweaks) in a skit from the television show Saturday Night Live, in episode 13 of season 25. It was used to protect the protagonist against a curse put on him by a homeless man, as long as he hung it above his bed. His protection ended when his wife accidentally knocked it down and broke it.

Dance Shakeout

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 12th, 2013
Primary Language: English

This is a ritual performed by my informant’s dance team prior to every performance. The team would stand in a circle and the team captain would select a number, generally 10 or 15. The girls would start to shake their right hand in the air at the wrist, counting up from one to the number previously selected by the captain. Once they had shaken that hand that many times, they would switch to the left hand and repeat the process. Then the right foot, then the left. Then they would return to the right hand and shake that one fewer times than the previous shake, and the ritual would continue on. Each round would be counted slightly louder than the previous. When it got down to where you only shook every hand and foot once, all of the girls would either do a pre-decided cheer or simply jump up and down yelling to prepare them for their performance, and then go out onstage.

This is a very common warmup exercise in many performing arts; it is described in the book Acting Antics: A Theatrical Approach to Teaching Social Understanding to Kids and Teens with Asperger’s Syndrome (29), and was also mentioned to me by another informant from Georgia before her dance competitions. It’s important because it loosens the muscles after stretching them and honing focus, and it is done together in a circle to encourage the connection between the performers before they go onstage. It increases in volume to either release some of the tension or egg it on, throwing into a constructive use. The cheer or scream at the end fosters team unity and spirit, and prepares the team to go out and perform.

Tashlikh

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 12th, 2013
Primary Language: English

This is a tradition practiced by my informant every Jewish New Year, in Paolos Verdes.

“Instead of going to services, family will go to our local cliff spot and we’ll take a blanket and sit and mom or dad will bring an envelope carrying all of our previous years lettesr and we’ll open them and read all of them to ourselves and become familiar with what our previous years goals were, did we meet them, and we’ll talk to each other about that. And then we’ll get a piece of paper and a pen and we’ll spend some time writing out things that we wish had gone differently, how we would have changed them, and what we wish for the new year. And then we go around and share those if we want, and we seal it. And then we’ll take a couple rocks and think about all the things that we didn’t like about this past year, and following the Jewish tradition where you throw bread, we throw the rocks and “let go” of all the things we felt sad about, or guilty for, or disagreed with in the past year.”

This is a version of the Jewish tradition tashlikh, in which Jews cast bread into the sea to symbolically cast aside their sins from the previous year. It is inscribed in a passage in the book of Micah, 7:18-20, which states “You will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea”. The use of letters and sharing would ensure careful thought and consideration, both personally and among the entire family. The substitution of rocks for bread could be for the ready availability of rocks on a cliff face, but it also might be more healing to throw something heavy as symbolic of sin.