Author Archives: Matthew Im

Jinx – a children’s game

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: student
Performance Date: 4/25/12
Primary Language: English

My source is a current college student who experienced the game “Jinx” growing up and in elementary school. Jinx is a children’s folk game played when two individuals say the same word at the same time. Whoever says “jinx” first is then given rights to silence the other until they say they are unjinxed. A jinxed person can either wait or beg the other to allow them to talk or they can secretly take a belonging of the other and hide it. Once that person realizes what they’re missing, the jinxed person can use it as blackmail to get unjinxed and can finally talk again.

Jinx is a typical children’s game of teasing and playing with another person. It teaches children how to learn how to take a joke and to play with one another in good fun. The game is taught from one to another by seeing it, or by being jinxed and realizing the consequences. Like other typical children’s folklore, jinxing is an imitation of more adult ideas. In the game of Jinx, the notions of authority over another person and blackmail are taught, though of course to a miniscule scale, much like how the game of cooties and rejection is also laden with adult themes.

돌잔치 – baby ceremony

Nationality: Korean American
Age: 50
Performance Date: 4/20/12
Primary Language: Korean
Language: english

Doljanchi is a tradition that occurs when a baby first turns 1 year old. My source first witnessed this with the birth of his baby sister in Korea. In this ritual, a baby is celebrated and his or her fortune is told. The fortune of the baby is told by placing the child  in front of a table of foods and objects such as string, books, brushes, ink and money. Whichever object the child picks up will foretell the child’s future. For example, money or rice signify wealth, while a brush means a scholar. People will often bet with money for fun to guess what a baby might choose at such a ceremony. At these ceremonies, entire extended families are often invited, making such events very important in Korean culture.

Doljanchi appears to show the significance that having a healthy child holds in Korean culture. The objects placed on the table as well as the objects that the parents of the child want them are symbolic of faith in one’s children. Predestination appears to be a large part of Korean culture as well, though nowadays the ritual is said to have become much more simply a family gathering than anything else.

Korean Proverb

Nationality: Korean-american
Age: 50
Performance Date: 5/20/12
Primary Language: Korean
Language: english

My source first heard this as a young girl in Korea. The saying goes “Don’t pour water into a pot that has hole in the bottom”. She first heard this from her mother who was trying to tell her that there were other ways to do things as well.

This proverb seems to be saying to not keep up a futile effort in something that is known to be a failed cause. It is a very practical proverb that I think can be relevant to nearly everybody regardless of nationality. In many countries, a proverb like this is likely to exist, encouraging thinking outside the box and looking for new solutions.

Korean proverb

Nationality: Korean-american
Age: 50
Primary Language: English
Language: korean

My source is a middle-aged Korean-American woman who first heard this proverb as a child from her mom. The saying goes, “믿는 도끼에 발등 찍힌다” which translates to “one can hurt one’s foot even from one’s trusted axe”. Her description of what this meant was to not be careless despite being familiar with something.

As a Korean-American, I believe that this proverb provides excellent insight into the Korean people. They tend to be a very cautionary and meticulous people as a whole which even warranted the name the Hermit Kingdom at one point due to its paranoia with others. While, now Korea is a much more modernized nation, this ancient proverb was likely very characteristic of the nation.

Video Game Practical Jokes

Nationality: Chinese-American
Age: 20
Occupation: student
Primary Language: English
Language: cantonese

My source is a current college student who first experienced this practical joke in middle school in an online game called Counter Strike. He described the situation as one in which all of the other more experienced gamers knew that a certain player was new and decided they would play a little joke on him. When the new gamer asked for advice on how to improve, the older gamers told him to “press F10” and it would make his aiming better, as it was a shooting game. When the new gamer pressed F10, his game immediately shut down and crashed, disconnecting him. My source describes how all of the older gamers, after realizing that the new gamer had disconnected due to pressing F10 laughed and congratulated one another.

This practical joke is the classic case of once you fall for the joke once, you don’t fall for it again, but you rather try to pull the joke on unsuspecting newbies. While it is not written anywhere that the button F10 would immediately cause your game to crash, through either falling prey to the practical joke or by hearing it from others, you now know the joke as well, making it folklore.