Author Archives: Scott Wey

Concert Interactions for Luck

Nationality: Chinese American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/11/2013
Primary Language: English

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“So as a pianist, whenever I have a recital or competition, or when I’m about to perform, I guess it’s a habit or something I always do, I have to talk to someone. So, if it’s a stranger, I don’t really care, I just go up to someone like, ‘hey.’ you know, just talk about something, I don’t know about what. It just helps me calm down and gives me that strength and that luck to play well.”

My informant has established a ritual to cope with pre-performance stress. Perhaps the interaction with another human being relaxes him and allows him to think about other things rather than worry about how he’ll perform. Often times, a person’s nerves may prevent him or her from performing their best. Focusing too much on one part of the song may cause him to tense up or forget a different part of the song. Therefore, maintaining a calm state for him before going on stage may prove beneficial. The ritual is relatively easy to achieve as there are people everywhere in a concert hall. Through this ritual he is able to quickly able to calm his nerves and boost his confidence with some luck from his ritual.

Nail Worms

Nationality: Taiwanese American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/12/2013
Primary Language: English
Language: Mandarin Chinese

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“When I was little, my parents used to tell me that if I bit my nails, I’d get worms in my stomach. But, I never did, so it’s okay. But it’s one of those things parents tell you to discourage you from doing bad things.”

Sometimes parents seem pretty desperate to discourage bad habits. As a child, I think this would have information deterred me from biting my nails. When I was young, I really enjoyed eating raw tomatoes. For some reason, this really bothered my mother who told me in graphic detail how parasites living on an uncooked tomato could bore their way through my intestinal tract and come out of my bottom. I am still hesitant to eat uncooked tomatoes to this day.

The idea that she would get worms from chewing her nails may be influenced by the fact that nails are known to carry many different species of bacteria. Since kids are constantly putting their hands into their mouths, parents would find it necessary to scare them into stopping, or teaching them to clean their hands often to prevent them from becoming ill.

When we hear about horrible things like this as a child, they really stick in your mind even after you’ve grown up even if you’ve learned otherwise. Parents hope to discourage bad habits from forming by slightly scaring their children. It makes sense why many of the folktales that the Brothers Grimm collected were so grim: so the cautionary tales children heard would stick with them.

The Flag and Luck

Nationality: Chinese American
Age: 23
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/13/2013
Primary Language: English

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“When I was younger, at my school we would have flag duty, which meant that every morning before the start of classes we would have to go take the American flag and put it on the flagpole and hoist it up and apparently its bad luck if it ever touches the ground. So we had to make sure it never touched the ground.”

The American flag is one of the symbols of our country and should be respected. There exists a formal United States Flag Code in Chapter 1 of the United States Code that outlines how the flag of the United States should be treated. According to this document, the flag should not ever touch the ground or anything beneath it, as it is considered disrespectful to allow that to happen. This might be where this piece of folklore stems from. It certainly does seem like disrespecting something as symbolic and important as the US flag would invite bad luck. Perhaps the teachers at the school felt it may be difficult for young students to comprehend treating the flag with such respect, and described the consequences as “bad luck” as a more universal reason not to accidentally disrespect the flag. Furthermore, this piece of folklore might help to ensure that young flag guards take extra care when handling the flag.

A related urban legend states that the US flag must be burned if it ever touches the ground. This is actually just a combination of the two United States Flag Codes. The other flag code is about how a worn out flag must be destroyed respectfully, most often in fire. The urban legend sounds plausible as a flag dirtied by the ground might be considered ruined and fire is often thought to be a purifying force.

Water Bottle Toxins

Nationality: Taiwanese American
Age: 20
Occupation: USC Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/10/2013
Primary Language: English
Language: Mandarin Chinese

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“So whenever I bring a water bottle onto the car I almost always forget it there. My dad says that after you leave it in the sun and the bottle heats up, you’ll get cancerous toxins in the water and he would never let me drink it and would always force me to pour it out in front of him.”

The belief that water bottles leach toxins into the water that they hold is not a novel one.  I have heard this health belief from many other people in the United States. Generally, the usual concern is due to BPA (bisphenol-A), which is said to interfere with natural hormone regulation. My high school chemistry teacher believed strongly in this health belief and spent one of his lectures demonstrating how it is possible for BPA to leach from a plastic water bottle into the water it holds. As a precaution, he was often seen with a metal water bottle.

However, this is my first time hearing about possible toxins causing cancer. I think this plays into a cultural fear of carcinogens, especially within the food manufacturing sector, and combines it with our health beliefs about plastic water bottles.  None of my foreign relatives share this health belief, which leads to me to believe that it is mostly a belief shared by those in the US or specifically health and environmentally-conscious California. This health belief most likely stems from the fear of “chemicals” that seems to run rampant in our society. It is a fear of the unknown. We don’t know how water bottles are made and how the substances used in manufacturing them interact with our day-to-day usages, so we tend to assume the worst.

Furthermore, water is a life-giving substance to humans and the idea of vessels used to hold it “betraying” us and leaching something poisonous into it has a certain appeal to it. This health belief has been largely debunked in scientific literature: while plastic water bottles do leach BPA, the amount leached is so negligible that one would be more likely to die of water poisoning before the BPA levels would reach any significant level.

See:
Schmid, P., Kohler, M., Meierhofer, R., Luzi, S., Wegelin, M. “Does the reuse of PET bottles during solar water disinfection pose a health risk due to the migration of plasticisers and other chemicals into the water?” Water Research. 4 Sep. 2008, Volume 42, Issue 20: 5054-5060.

ACC. “The Safety of Polythylene Teraphthalate (PET).” PlasticsInfo.Org. American Chemistry Council, 1 Jan. 2007. Web. 13 Nov. 2009. <http://www.plasticsinfo.org/s_plasticsinfo/sec_generic.asp?CID=657&DID=2605>

Lucky Socks for Basketball

Nationality: Canadian
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/11/2013
Primary Language: English

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“So I used to play basketball and when I played well I’d mark my socks, so if I played well I’d always wear the right sock on the right foot until I played bad and then I’d switch them up.”

I think this is a good example of contagious magic. According to my informant, the thinking behind this is that if he plays well with a certain sock configuration, the socks must either be causing the good performance or they must soak up some of the “mojo” of the good game and will lead to good games in the future. However, once he starts playing poorly, it’s obvious that the sock configuration has lost its magic and needs to be reconfigured. This is a way for him to relieve pressure from himself and stay calm in stressful games. If he does well, he will continue to do well thanks to his lucky socks. If he does poorly, it is not because his game is bad, but because his socks are no longer good luck socks and simply need to be changed. By rationalizing his basketball performance like this, my informant is able to stay cool and confident under pressure. Furthermore, the belief is that luck can be recycled, as long as he finds the proper order for his socks.