Author Archives: Rebecca Witzel

Traps and Doors

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/30/14
Primary Language: English

When my friend was a kid she played a game at recess on circular four square court.  The game was essentially a variant of tag.  One person would be it and they would chase the other players around the court.  The rules were that the players must stay on the outside of the court and not enter any of the squares.  The court had cracks in it which could be entered from the outside but if a player was on the inside the cracks became a dead end and they had to turn around.  When players were tagged they went into the prison area (the squares in the court) and they could be tagged out.

My friend invented this game and played it with her friends at recess so the game was very close to her.  I think she felt pride that her friends all partook in a piece of folklore that she invented.

The game seems to be at its heart very close to tag but the moderations allow tag to be played in an area that would ordinarily be much too small for tag.  This shows the evolution of a folkloric game into a form that is adapted for the environment it was confined to.  The addition of the cracks as a rule also shows the complexity in the game practice and an incorporation of the environment into the gameplay.

 

 

 

Business Frat Hazing Tradition

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/30/14
Primary Language: English

My friend knows someone in a business frat who told her that one of the things they had to do as hazing was spend four hours locked in closet together in complete darkness.  While they waited the members played  the song called Trapped in a Closet on repeat.

My friend found this tradition to be rather simplistic.  She didn’t think that there was any point to this hazing tradition because it wasn’t teaching the hazed individuals any real lesson.  Instead it was just hazing for the purpose of hazing.

I agree with her, the hazing tradition is rather simplistic.  It doesn’t seem to have any purpose except to teach the prospective members to blindly do what they are told.  This is an unhealthy form of hazing because the lack of lesson is degrading and represses individuality.  As a result it reinforces the idea of hazing as cruelty.  This probably furthers the process of hazing from year to year because it will make new members them more likely to inflict this kind of cruelty onto others as their comeuppance for having them done to them.

007

Nationality: Switzerland
Age: 20
Occupation: Student/Filmmaker
Residence: Los Angeles/Switzerland
Performance Date: 4/28/14
Primary Language: French
Language: English, German

In this childrens hand game the goal is to “kill the other player”  Similar to rock paper scissors the game begins with a lead in, (the two players clapping their hands with each other three times) after the third clap the players than make one of three moves.

  1. Sheild – denotated by crossing your arms over your chest
  2. Gun – denotated with both hands in a hand gun gesture with thumbs up and pointers extended with the other fingers not extended
  3. Power up – denotated by making a thumbs up sign with both hands and bringing them above your shoulders.

Rules

  1. Sheild protects against gun
  2. Gun can only be used after it has been powered up once per use
  3. In order to win you must shoot on a turn where your opponent is not protecting themselves.

My friend called this game Zero – Zero – Seven (007) which seems to be a direct reference to James Bond.  I played it too as a kid but not with any specific name.   She said she played this game as a kid and when she was in india she taught it to a girl there.

The game is interesting cause it seems to be a more violent variant of rock paper scissors.  The James Bond reference is interesting as well because it is unclear if that name came later or the popularization of James bond is a terminus post quem.

Mysterious Stranger: Baby Catching Edition

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/30/14
Primary Language: English

My friend has some family lore that her aunt tells about when her cousin was 3 she was sitting on a balcony a few stories up and somehow managed to fall off..  My friend’s aunt, the baby’s mother frantically ran downstairs to check on her child, who she expected to be dead, if not seriously injured.  When she came downstairs she found the toddler sitting on the floor.  When the mother asked her daughter what happened she claimed that “a man caught me” but when the mother looked around there was no one around.

My friend told me this story when I prompted her for any legends.  She didn’t seem particularly put off by the uneasiness of the tale, it was simply a story that had ben retold by her family so often it was very ordinary at this point.

This seems to be a  quasi ghost story, with a disappearing savior as opposed to a ghost that explains an unexplainable phenomenon, but still gives an air of unease.  Yes, the stranger hypothetically saved the toddlers life, but why did he not wait to stick around?  If a baby falls from sky and you have the decency to catch it, wouldn’t you also have the decency to return it to its parents? That would be what any normal person would do.  So the ghost in this story is both a savior and a sinister figure.

This story reminded me of a disappearing hitchhiker story that I read, which is similar in that it also tells of a figure, who disappears.  The figure can often provide some form of advice to the other person in the story.  This seems to be a parallel about the phenomenon where people enter and leave our lives very rapidly but cause catalytic change.

Greek Compliments

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/30/14
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

In Greece it is customary that if you give someone a compliment you must immediately spit on them, making a sound like “p-th p-th”

My roommate is half Greek and she learned this tradition from her mother.  She explained that the spitting is to prevent the compliment from going to their head and inflating their ego.

This is interesting because it promotes a humitity above all else.  This custom illuminates a light on a culture which retains a mentality that people are ordinary and must always remember that.  This seems to be particularly strong in Greek culture where they had a theological system where gods were very similar to humans, they experiences human desires and intereacted with humans on a regular basis.  As a result people were very aware that they were less than gods, who weren’t that special to begin with, leading to a humility and a custom that exists to prevent egos from being inflated.