Author Archives: Sparrow Harrell

Trial game riddle – Trains

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: College student
Residence: USC
Performance Date: 2/14/2023
Primary Language: English

D is 19 years old, she’s a college student. She heard a lot of trail games and riddles, and shared one that she learned on a camping trip in high school in California. She says that only people from California have ever recognized it. 

“There’s a riddle called trains. The riddle has one person who’s the teller, usually the teller knows the riddle and no one else knows it. Someone says “I’m going to tell you guys about a bunch of trains going to different places, and you have to figure out the pattern.” You have the guess the answer. If I were to say this riddle, I’d say “There’s uhh one train in Los Angeles, zero in San Francisco, there’s like uhh… uhh you could say there’s two trains in Utah. There’s uhh one train in Florida” and it keeps going like that. The answer to the riddle is that every time you say “uhh” in your leadup to the state, that’s how many trains there are.”

I recognized a familiar riddle that I had learned as a child in California, another one that leads you on a long confusing journey while people try to keep up with a pattern, but the answer ends up being something stupid. The informant said that people tried to think about letters or vowels, but the real answer is “just so stupid.” When it comes to riddles, some people want to solve them to see smart, especially once you get a bit older. You want to seem smarter than the kids who normally hear this riddle, so people think of really complex potential answers. In the end though, the answer is just something silly. People sometimes take themselves too seriously when playing silly games and riddles, trying to prove that they are smart and capable of figuring it out easily. Often it’s little kids who are able to get the answer because they’re not overthinking it. Riddles like this encourage people to get back to their childish roots.

English Proverb

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: College Student
Residence: USC
Performance Date: 2/23/2023
Primary Language: English

M is 19 years old, and she is a college student. She grew up in Colorado Springs, Colorado. She heard this proverb at elementary school age from her mother when she was complaining about a group project.

“My mom would always tell me “Two minds are greater than one” which I think is very true. Growing up when I needed some advice she’d always tell me that proverb.”

This proverb seems like a great one to tell kids who don’t want to work with others. It encourages kids to work together and learn teamwork, which are traits that parents and schools often try to instill in their kids. It’s a very old saying that seems to trace back to the Bible. It’s a great proverb because it encourages people not to be selfish. In American culture that promotes competition, people want to be the only one who comes up with a great idea and gets the credit for it. But this proverb says that people should try to attack problems together. If people work together instead of in opposition with each other, society would benefit far more from it. This seems to be a mentality in other cultures, but one that is less common in current American society.

Telephone Gesture

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: college student
Residence: USC
Performance Date: 2/23/2023
Primary Language: English

M is a 19 year old college student. She shares a gesture that she learned from her mother in Colorado Springs when she was a toddler playing pretend.

“When you mention you’re calling someone, you put your pinky out as the receptor and the thumb as the transmitter to motion you’re calling someone. When playing with my mom I’d pretend to be calling someone and my mom would answer with her “phone” that was actually her hand.” 

This gesture is particularly interesting because it is rapidly fading out. Now, if you ask a toddler or a child to show you them making a phone call, they’ll put their whole hand flat to their ear, replicating a cell phone. The informant and I are nearly the last generation to learn the gesture of a telephone using our fingers. The gesture is terminus post quem the invention of the dial telephone, and terminus ante quem the generation raised with cell phones. This shows how rapidly folklore changes, and how easy it is to lose folklore. My generation will be the last ones to use the finger gesture, and eventually it will entirely die out when kids barely remember what old phones used to look like. As technology rapidly changes, folklore is changing at an even faster rate than ever before. We have no clue what folklore might look like for children in 20 years. It will be interesting to see what folklore says, and which is phased out. 

Elementary School Rhyme 

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: College student
Residence: USC
Performance Date: 2/23/2023
Primary Language: English

M is a 19 year old college student. She grew up in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and shares a rhyme she learned in elementary school when she was in the cafeteria at lunch.

“Like elementary school on the playground you and your friends would draw a little teddy bear on one hand and scribble on the other and you’d say “This is Teddy. Teddy says hi” then you’d SMACK the other hand and say “this is Teddy when a car goes by.””

I’ve heard the same rhyme, except in California we drew a stick figure and would say “This is Steve.” This and other childhood games actually reveals a morbid fascination kids seemed to have. A lot of childhood rhymes are actually very violent in nature and play on really dark humor. I think this may be a way for kids to feel like they’re rebelling, to feel more mature. They joke about taboo things that their parents and teachers might not like them talking about because it makes them feel more adult. Maybe it also helps them make light of real topics that are actually quite frightening for children. They know death is a real thing, but they don’t want to think about it, so they make light of it.