Category Archives: Folk Beliefs

Post-Joke Toe-Grabbing

Nationality: American, Irish
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Downtown LA
Performance Date: 4.16.14
Primary Language: English

The Informant is 21 years old, is a junior at USC studying Screenwriting, and is from Chicago, Illinois.

Me: Okay, so explain what just happened!

Him: Well, we’re all comedians in this house so we like to tell jokes. So we have a lot of joke competitions? It actually started in my dorm with my freshman year roommate. Whenever someone came over and jokes started being told, and mind you, they’re usually SUPER cheesy…just sad jokes…we’d have the guest pick which joke was funniest between me and my roommate. Whoever the guest deemed had told the funnier joke had to have their toes pulled by the losing joker. Don’t ask me how we decided to do that. I think we were pretty drunk and thought it was the most hilarious thing in the world.

Me: So, what do you do now?

Him: Well, now I live with 5 dudes, including my freshman year roommate, so we brought it with us not thinking it would really stick. And now there are ALWAYS people over, so that toe-pulling thing happens all of the time now. It caught on! We’re always just yanking on each others’ feet. It’s embarrassing. Don’t ask me why we do it *laughs*.

Me: Who usually wins?

Him: The person who comes up with the wittiest pun, typically. It’s whoever the guest chooses, also! We don’t really even think about it anymore. The people that come over also know the process now, too, so jokes will be told and someone will  just shout “M*******!” and I have to go pull M*******’s toes for him. Actually, people don’t even have to be over and we’ll just do it between ourselves. It’s rare that I get my toes pulled though *laughs*.

Analysis:

This presents an unique folk gesture by involving competition, humor, and an atypical interaction of body parts. The informant seemed almost embarrassed of his house’s little ritual because of how ridiculous even HE thought it was. I remember when it was first performed I was so confused by the course of events. I looked over at the informant after I deemed him the winner, and he turned red with embarrassment at the little ritual of his toes being pulled. Yet, despite his embarrassment, he clearly enjoyed the ritual in the the ways that it brings him closer to his roommates and friends. This shows that a lot of pride can be created from the establishment of a ritual, despite whatever level of ridiculousness it may involve. It’s this exact reason that we always play pranks on someone when it’s their birthday, why clubs have embarrassing inductions for their new members, and why college seniors always try to pull of the biggest school prank. Though they may be embarrassing at times, these rituals create a self-established sense of pride among those involved.

Gay-Dating Tips

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Downtown LA
Performance Date: 4.22.14
Primary Language: English

The Informant is 20 years old, a junior at USC studying Screenwriting, and is from Denver, Colorado.

Him: When I first got to college I didn’t really know much about the gay-dating world just because I don’t know I didn’t have much experience in it. But then I would go out with some of my gay friends or I’d hear from them the next day about them making eye contact with people at clubs or bars or something, and I’d be like, “What? I didn’t know that was a thing.”

Me: What is it?

Him: Well, apparently, and this is according to my friends, like, if you make eye contact with a man at a gay bar for 3-seconds, it means that it’s okay to go home with them for the night. But like, it can be funny because you’ll hear stories like, “Nope, he only looked at me for like 2.5 seconds, it’s a no!”

Me: Has it worked for you?

Him: I mean. Yes? I’m pretty sure it’s a thing just because I hear it so much, but I’m afraid to just stare a guy down and him be weirded out, especially if he’s straight and doesn’t know what’s happening.

Me: Where did your friends hear it from?

Him: I’m assuming they also heard it from friends in high school. It’s just something that they came to college already knowing, so I had to pick up on it. This kind of stuff isn’t really talked about a ton so you have to learn by experience or through knowing people that have experience.

Analysis:

I think that this type of folklore is informative due to how specific of a demographic it adheres to. Particularly young, gay, males, which is not a demographic whose idiosyncrasies are often discussed in textbooks, news segments, or a lot of popular culture. If anything it gives view to a different side of the young dating world that most of us are familiar with. It’s also interesting to me that these sorts of tips are the tips that you’d have to go to your peers to learn. It seems that the Informant could only get this information from the demographic itself because of how specific a gesture, or “folklore performance” that it is. The Informant also spoke of other gay-dating tips that he learned, but he had read them previously on gay websites. But this tip he had no clue about and never found when researching gay dating tips and couldn’t experience until he had “lived through it”.

Red bean soup (红豆汤/糖水)

Nationality: Chinese-American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/20/2014
Primary Language: English
Language: Chinese (Shanghai dialect)

INFO:
Dried dates
Red bean
Longan – a fruit like lychee
Rock sugar
Water

Slow cook everything together in a pot on the stove so the beans would turn mushy. Serve either cold or hot.

BACKGROUND:
The informant’s mother used to make red bean soup (in Chinese: 红豆汤 [hong duo tang] or 糖水 [tang shui]) with dates in it — it was supposed to help with period pains and overall health. Her mother make the soup from scratch in huge quantities.

In general, it was served cold in the summer and hot in the winter. The informant actually didn’t really like the soup that much, but her mother made it with such care that she couldn’t refuse.

CONTEXT:
The informant, one of my housemates, shared this recipe and background with me in conversation.

ANALYSIS:
Many traditional foodways also doubled as remedies, and are often paired with other “practical” advice such as “don’t talk a lot in cold weather after eating a meal or your stomach will get upset.”

I was also raised by Chinese parents, and find that much of this kind of upbringing information could be corroborated with my own childhood. I think it’s super interesting that even though our parents came from different regions in China, they still carried much of the same cultural information over the Pacific and passed it on to their children in America.

Gravity Hill

Nationality: Half black, half Mexican-American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/20/2014
Primary Language: English

INFO:
In Altadena, California, there’s a hill called Gravity Hill. When you go on its downward-facing slope in a car in neutral, the car starts going uphill.

Gravity Hill is situated next by a reservoir; there are trees everywhere, but it’s a pretty open space otherwise.

BACKGROUND:
The informant first heard about when she was 12 — she’d heard that it was super creepy and that there were ghosts and spirits pushing you up the hill, and that the “magic” worked better at night.

When she first went on it, she thought that the entire scene was an illusion of angles. Later on, she would walk around in that area all the time, climb the fences that surrounded the area and hang out there with friends. Hanging out in Gravity Hill was very much “a thing” to do when you were a kid or a teenager in Altadena.

Altadena in general is, in the words of the informant, an Altadena native, “hippie dippy.” She describes the locals as “sort of weird,” so something like Gravity Hill seemed right at home there.

CONTEXT:
The informant, one of my housemates, shared the story with me in conversation.

ANALYSIS:
The existence of these sort of geographical anomalies, where the perceived tilt of the earth doesn’t match how things actually move, is not that rare — I recently traveled to a similar place in NorCal named Confusion Hill. In both cases, the existence of spirits was taken as granted, not necessarily because people strongly believed in them, but because it was just seen as another weird thing to add onto the already weird location.

That said, the fact that the residents in the area are known for being a little off kilter as well makes the existence of and continued legendary presence of Gravity Hill more understandable.

Zorthian

Nationality: Half black, half Mexican-American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/20/2014
Primary Language: English

INFO:
The informant lives in a house in Altadena — behind her house is a trail that leads into the woods. At a certain point on that trail, there are a bunch of abandoned-looking houses that are actually occupied. This area is collectively known as Zorthian. People go there to scare themselves, but it’s rumored to be a meeting ground for local members of the KKK. There are other legends surrounding the area, but the informant isn’t clear on those.

BACKGROUND:
Because the informant’s house is so close to Zorthian, she can sometimes hear the screams — and subsequent laughter — of the people who go there to scare themselves. She also frequently sees cop cars in the area, as Zorthian’s residents call in police to take care of trespassing people in the area.

At night, the entire area is tree-lined and very dark. People, especially teenagers, go there to drink and smoke. This practice is clearly despised by the people who actually live there, but because of the creepy, strange associations of just the buildings and where they are themselves, people still go to the area to scare and be scared.

CONTEXT:
The informant, one of my housemates, shared the story with me in conversation.

ANALYSIS:
What I find really interesting about this story is how even though it’s generally acknowledged that there’s nothing especially haunted or out of place in Zorthian (besides its ridiculous name), locals still treat it as such, even if only in a joking way.