Author Archives: Sophie Leaf

Car Game

Nationality: Mexican
Age: 24
Occupation: Student
Residence: West Covina, CA
Performance Date: April 15, 2008
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Car game

Whenever you ran a yellow light, everyone in the car had to kiss their hand and then touch the top of the car whether you were driving or just a passenger. Whoever was the last to touch the top of the car lost and was ridiculed mercilessly by everyone else in the car followed by a few light punches to the arm. Then if there was a car with one head light out, whoever saw it first had to scream “sex” and whoever said it first gets to choose who in the car they want to kiss.

Alex doesn’t remember who initiated this game but he remembers learning it from a male friend of his when he was attending UCSB. One day he was in the car with three other people, 2 girls and 2 guys, and they ran a yellow light and three of the people did the game while Alex didn’t do anything, not knowing how to play. They teased him and then punched him. Since that day, he has taught many people the game and has met other people who have played the game or at least heard of it.

When Alex told me this game, I had heard of it but a different version of it. In my version, instead of saying “sex,” we just looked for cars with one light out and if you saw one, you had to yell “car” and then whoever was the last to yell car had to get out and run around the car once before the driver locked the doors after counting to five. While each version of the game has a different outcome, the general idea is to embarrass someone in the car and make them do something they might not necessarily want to do.

Alex believed that the game is relatively harmless and I completely agree however, I found it interesting to note that this game is very similar to the game I know, but you just kiss your hand and hit the car and that’s it. But in Alex’s game, it goes much farther. When I then realized that he was taught the game by a male, it occurred to me that it was the exact same game but the guy who taught it to him was around seventeen when he had learned the game and it was clearly a game that was elaborated on in order to fulfill the desires of guys in a car if they were with attractive girls. This specific game and how it was changed shows how just gender can change a folk game and make it into something new.

Children’s Game

Nationality: Caucasian
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Orange County, CA
Performance Date: March 20, 2008
Primary Language: English

Children’s rhyme

Miss Mary Mac, Mac, Mac

All dressed in black, black, black.

With silver buttons, buttons, buttons

All down her back, back, back.

She asked her mother, mother, mother

For 50 cents, cents, cents.

To see the elephants, elephants, elephants

Jump over the fence, fence, fence.

They jumped so high, high, high

They reached the sky, sky, sky

They never came back, back, back

Till the 4th of July, July, July.

Claire doesn’t remember when she first heard this rhyme but she does remember she was fairly young, probably around seven or eight years old, when she learned the song in its entirety. She first learned the full song when she entered fourth grade and met everyone in her class on the first day. She described how on the first day of fourth grade the teacher sat everyone down, taught them the rhyme and then paired everyone up over and over to practice it. She doesn’t think there is any real significance behind it except for it being a childhood game that helped her meet everyone in her class and really bond. When she thinks back on it, it reminds her of her childhood and fond memories of playing with her friends and meeting so many new people.

Claire believes that there may not be any real significance behind this rhyme; however, it was one that every child in her school knew and has been passed down in her school every year. She described how each year, whoever entered fourth grade, would spend the first day learning this song. Claire believes it was meant to be a bonding experience for everyone and to get everyone to know each other better. She remembers how on her first day she met some of her best friends by being paired up with tem and reciting this rhyme. She said it was such a good bonding experience because many people had heard the rhyme but not in its entirety so by being paired up and learning the rhyme in its entirety, you got to help each other out and really form strong friendships. She also pointed out how it taught her to be patient, especially if one of her partners wasn’t picking up on it as quickly.

While I believe that this is a normal childhood rhyme, it is interesting how a very popular rhyme that is known by many people all over, was held so special in her school. But this story proves that folklore is used to create social bonds between people because you create this special connection when you are able to share a song, story or joke with someone because you learned it together and thus is forever engrained in your brain. This story proves how Folklore can take something as mundane as a children’s rhyme and make it into an experience where an entire class of forty students connects and forever stays connected through that rhyme.

Annotation: This rhyme can be found in the book called Miss Mary Mac All Dressed in Black: Tongue Twisters, Jump-Rope Rhymes and Other Children’s Lore from New England (Paperback), a book that highlights the most popular rhymes, riddles and tongue twisters for kids.

Hastings, Scott E. Miss Mary Mac All Dressed in Black: Tongue Twisters,

Jump-Rope Rhymes and Other Children’s Lore from New England (Paperback).

August House, 1990. 2 May 2008 <http://books.google.com/

books?id=KB6vAAAACAAJ&dq=miss+mary+mac>.

Car Game

Nationality: Caucasian
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Beverly Hills, CA
Performance Date: April 4, 2008
Primary Language: English

Car game

Game: When running through a yellow stoplight, kiss your hand and touch it to the top of

your car

I learned this trick from one of my friends in high school, around when we both started driving, so around sixteen. We were driving to school one day and we ran a yellow light and she kissed her hand and hit the top of the car. When I didn’t repeat what she had done she seemed to get very upset and I asked her why. She said her mom had told her since she was a child that if you didn’t do something to recognize that you had ran a yellow light, you would have bad luck, most likely a car accident of some sort. Not being a very superstitious person, I didn’t believe it, however, I ended up getting in the habit of doing it and since have told many people the same story thus convincing myself it was true.

My friend believed her mother told her that story in order to make her more aware of driving. She believes that by her mother telling her to do an action every time you run a yellow light, it could make you more cautious about running a light for fear of forgetting to perform the action and thus in turn having bad luck. While I definitely do not believe that not performing the action will cause bad luck, I agree that performing this action does make you more aware of your driving. There have been many times where I’ve ended up running a yellow light and fear has stricken me because I am scared of getting a ticket. However, when I was discussing this particular game with my friend Mandy, she feels that the game is dangerous itself because you’re choosing to take a hand off the wheel while simultaneously speeding up to run the yellow light. I agree that it could be perceived as dangerous since you would be removing one of your hands from the wheel, but I think sometimes in our society, having bad luck upon you instead of just taking the small risk in order to prevent bad luck seems to prevail and that’s why I think this car game has been spread around so much.

Contemporary Legend

Nationality: Mexican
Age: 24
Occupation: Student
Residence: West Covina, CA
Performance Date: April 15, 2008
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Urban legend- The Boogeyman

Idea that there is a monster of some sort who lives under your bed or in your closet and

lives to haunt you.

Alex heard about the Boogeyman when he was very young. He describes that when he was younger he feared the boogeyman like no other. Everyone knew about him all his friends, his mom and dad, and he or she all said he existed and Alex believed that they wouldn’t lie to him because he was a kid. But the boogeyman in his household was a guy that would kidnap him and take him away forever and he would disappear forever and never see his mom again. He was so terrified by the thought of this that he used to dream about him and imagine in his dreams what he would look like and how he would kill Alex. Luckily, Alex had a twin brother, who lived in the same room with him throughout his whole childhood. If not for him, Alex claims that he probably would never have gotten any sleep at all. It wasn’t because he thought Robert would protect him, it was because he slept on the bottom bunk and he knew that the monsters would probably get him first, giving Alex ample time to escape. The Boogeyman was so real to Alex that he couldn’t even go into dark rooms during the day unless someone was with him.

Alex believes that this “boogeyman” was so real because the idea of the Boogeyman has been passed down for so many years and thus even though Alex’s parents no longer believed in the boogeyman, it was a concept they grew up with as well and didn’t necessarily want to negate that tradition of believing that the boogeyman exists. But I believe there is a deeper meaning to the concept of the boogeyman.

While I agree that the boogeyman is something that every child grows up with there is a reason that the story, even with how much it scares children, continues to be passed down and feared by children all over the world. I believe that being afraid of the boogieman is a grown up process. It is that stage in a child’s life where there is a tug of war between growing up and being a “big kid” and holding onto their childhood and staying in the safety of their parents. Today, all over the country, everyone ends up being afraid of something. It’s part of growing up. Every kid will experience the struggle of being able to conquer your fear and grow up, or they can stay being stuck in that immature stage where fear dominates your life. Thus the boogieman represents that in-between stage and once the child is no longer afraid of that unknown monster, they have really matured.

Annotation: This urban legend is also found in the novel The Boogeyman which is a book containing many short stories about the illusive creature.

Battin, B W. The Boogeyman. Ballantine Books, 1984. 2 May 2008

<http://books.google.com/books?id=3s0eAAAACAAJ&dq=the+boogeyman>.

Jump Rope Rhyme

Nationality: Caucasian
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 10, 2008
Primary Language: English

Child’s jump rope rhyme

(Girls name) is having a baby

(Boys name) is going crazy

They went to the doctor and the doctor said

Boy, girl, twins or an alien

Claire played this game when she was a bit older, around thirteen, and she remembers she began hearing this jump rope song right after they had just had their first sex-ed class. A group would gather together and someone would be jumping in the middle of two other people and they would chant this song. You would keep jumping until you no longer could jump anymore and whatever you landed on, boy, girl, twins, or an alien, was what everyone would predict you would have as a child. Now Claire knows its obviously a silly game, but at the time if someone landed on alien or they wanted a girl instead of a boy, she said that people would get really upset about it, especially if you landed on alien because you would be taunted all the rest of recess for it.

Claire believes that her and her friends were so embarrassed by this jump rope game because it was children joking about something that is kind of serious. The topic of having a child at that age is something that is slowly becoming a possibility, Claire described, and to sing a song about it made people nervous but adventurous at the same time. She described it as children dabbling with concepts they don’t understand but are trying to grasp the concept of.

I completely agree with Claire that this rhyme would be appealing because of the material being sung about in the song.  I believe that there are a lot of childhood rhymes that address subjects that may be more adult in subject but seem child like so it helps kid to talk about them without being uncomfortable. Through folklore such as children’s rhymes, topics can be addressed and taught to children but in a playful manner so that children can learn about topics such as babies, sex, and other adult topics without being uncomfortable. Thus this children’s rhyme demonstrates that and as Claire said, it helped them talk about a topic but jokingly.