Author Archives: Sophia Rosenberg

“Don’t Borrow Trouble”

Text

“My dad always says, ‘don’t borrow trouble.’ Like if I’m worrying about something that hasn’t happened yet, or spiraling about a hypothetical, he’ll just go ‘don’t borrow trouble’ and that’s it. That’s the whole conversation. He grew up in the South and I think it’s a Southern thing. I catch myself saying it to my friends now too, which is annoying because I used to hate when he’d say it to me.”

Context

My informant’s father is from Georgia and uses this phrase constantly. She’s noticed she’s started using it herself in adulthood, even though it irritated her growing up.

Analysis

“Don’t borrow trouble” is a classic piece of American folk speech, usually associated with the South. It’s a great example of how proverbs do a lot of cultural work in just a few words. The phrase compresses a whole concept into three syllables: don’t anticipate problems that haven’t arrived, don’t spend present energy on hypothetical future suffering. The word “borrow” is what makes the saying catchy enough to land. It treats trouble like something you could go out and take on loan, building up worry like a debt before anything bad has actually happened. That’s a very practical, no-nonsense way of thinking about worry and fits the down-to-earth style of a lot of Southern sayings.

Knocking on Wood

Text

“So something about me is that ever since I was little, I would knock on wood three times And if I don’t see wood nearby, I would knock on my head three times. It started because my mom and older sister would do it all the time. I think it’s the reason I consider myself a superstitious person. Everytime I have a bad thought I knock to prevent it from happening. It gives me peace of mind.”

Context

My informant grew up in Miami and picked up this habit as a young child by watching her mom and older sister do it constantly. She still practices it today, knocking on wood three times whenever she has a bad or worrying thought, and knocking on her own head three times if no wood is around. She describes it as the reason she considers herself a superstitious person, and says it gives her peace of mind.

Analysis

Knocking on wood is one of the most widely practiced superstitions in the Western world. This account shows the ritual functioning less as a belief in literal magic and more as a tool for managing anxiety. The informant doesn’t claim that the knocking will actualy stop something bad from happening. She says it gives her peace of mind. This is a really common pattern in folk belief. The ritual survives because of what it does for the practitioner emotionally, not because anyone has confirmed it works. It’s a small action that gives her a sense of “control” over outcomes she can’t actually control. Exactly the psychological function superstition tends to serve.

Adam Walsh

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“Growing up in Miami Florida, I was around 7 when a local boy named Adam Walsh disappeared and was found decapitated in a canal. It shook the whole community. No one had seen anything like this at the time so every kid in South Florida was terrified to leave their homes. I remember I was attached at the hip to my parents for a while after.”

Context

My informant grew up in Miami, Florida, and was around seven years old when Adam Walsh, a local child, was abducted and murdered in 1981. The case had an enormous impact on South Florida and eventually on the entire country, since it led to John Walsh’s career as a victims’ advocate and the creation of America’s Most Wanted. He remembers the event as a defining moment of his childhood, one that made him cling to his parents and changed how kids in his community moved through public space.

Analysis

This is a memorate, a personal narrative tied to a real event that has since taken on legendary weight in the community where it happened. The story is folkloric because of the way it lives on in memory and gets retold. For people who grew up in South Florida in the early 1980s, the Adam Walsh case functions almost like a generational origin story for fear: a shared reference point that explains why their childhood looked the way it did, why their parents suddenly became more protective, why they couldn’t ride bikes alone to the mall anymore. The informant’s memory of being “attached at the hip” to his parents isn’t just a personal detail, it’s an experience tons of South Florida kids his age would recognize.

Campfire Story

Text

“One time, there was a girl and a boy on a date, and they drove into the woods. just to go on a date and sit by themselves and start a campfire. Once they put out the fire, they decided they were tired and wanted to go to bed but didn’t want to make the long drive back to their house. So they ended up trying to go to sleep in the front 2 seats of the car. 
They were trying to fall asleep for about 30 minutes when all of a sudden they heard a scratch. Scratch. Scratch. 
And it sounded like it was coming from the top of the roof. So the boyfriend, being being brave, looks out the window and looks on top of the car and sees nothing. They decide to go back to bed. 
Then 10 minutes later, scratch, scratch, scratch. have no idea what it is. So they get out of the car, annoyed with the noise, but it’s completely pitch black outside. they can’t find their flashlights. So instead, they both decide to look around the surrounding areas and see if they could find anything that was making such a weird noise. 
Thinking it was just an animal. The boyfriend separates from the girlfriend. quiet. And they end up… separated. 
After around 20 minutes of searching, the boyfriend ends up going back to the car, thinking that the girlfriend will be sitting in the car waiting for him. He goes in the car, can’t see anything. And all of a sudden, he’s sitting and hears scratch, scratch, scratch. 
He opens the door to the car, shines his flashlight around surrounding areas, doesn’t see anything. But then, he looks on top of the car. and see. His girlfriend, dead, hanging from a tree, and the only thing hanging down is her hand and her finger now that’s on the top of the car. 
Scratch, scratch, scratch.”

Context

The informant is a certified Eagle Scout from Kansas City, where he learned this campfire story.

Analysis

This is a classic “lovers’ lane” urban legend and it makes sense that my informant, an Eagle Scout from Kansas City, would carry a version of it. Scouting culture is one of the main motors of campfire horror storytelling in the U.S. These legends get passed down on overnight trips, around real fires, in exactly the kind of setting the story describes. The fact that he tells it fluently, with the rhythmic “scratch, scratch, scratch” repeated three times, reflects how oral the tradition is: the pattern of threes is a storytelling device he absorbed from hearing others tell it, not something he invented.

“Pony Wall”

Text

“So we used to have this pony wall in our house. Like a half wall, waist height, right by the front door. My cat would always sit on top of it, and we’d leave our shoes up there too. It was kind of like the spot where stuff just ended up. I don’t know, it was just always there. I think a lot of houses in Vegas have them which is where I was living at the time. I didn’t really think about it as a ‘thing’ until later.”

Context

My friend grew up in Las Vegas, where he lived in a house with this pony wall. After hearing him describe it, I looked into it and found that pony walls are a fairly common architectural feature in Las Vegas residential properties. Another term I came across for the same thing is “garden wall”.

Analysis

The pony wall is an example of material folk culture, a kind of vernacular architecture that shapes daily life without anyone consciously thinking of it as tradition. What makes it folkloric isn’t the wall itself but how it gets used. My friend’s family didn’t decide the pony wall was the shoe spot or the cat spot. It just became those things and was their families’ unspoken, shared agreement about how a space in their home worked. What is also interesting is that he had not noticed that the pony was was a regional feature until he moved from Las Vegas. People don’t notice the built environment they grew up in is distinctive until they encounter places that don’t have it.