Category Archives: Folk Beliefs

Peeling an Apple in Front of a Mirror

Nationality: Chinese
Age: 50
Occupation: QA Manager at DirecTV
Residence: Torrance, California
Performance Date: 4/26/2013
Primary Language: Chinese
Language: English

“If you peel an apple at 12 midnight in front of a mirror with a candle in one continuous shave without breaking the skin, the face of your future spouse will appear in the mirror.”

My mother tells me that she had heard this from several of her friends when she attended middle school in Hong Kong.  Many of her friends had tried this to see their future spouses, but my mother never believed that it would work.  She does not recall if her friends had seen their spouses and was unable to validate the belief.  The age that my mother had first heard this folklore is significant because it was during budding adolescence—a time when young tweens begin to think about the opposite sex, fantasize about their future soul mates, and grow increasingly curious about their sexuality.  Additionally, this phenomenon can only occur, supposedly, at 12 midnight, the moment of not quite being yesterday and still not really today.  The ambiguity of spatial time shrouds the belief in mystery—anything can happen at midnight.  However, I am not quite certain as to why the peeling of the apple is relevant to the revelation of a person’s spouse.  The only connection I can infer is that an apple is often symbolic of the Adam and Eve myth; and since Adam and Eve were the first couple, it then follows reason to explain why the apple is used to reveal the identity of a person’s soul mate.

Overall, this belief hardly seems like something that could only be confined to a particular culture or place.  Since most school children around the age of adolescence wonder about their destined soul mates or future loved ones, it seems like this folklore could be spread and shared over a large area of nations, cultures and beliefs.

Paper Stars

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: 4/13/2013
Primary Language: English
Language: Chinese

“All the girls would get this long strip of paper—expensive as hell—and you, like, fold it into little tiny stars—it has to be perfect, like, you can’t dent it anywhere—you make a thousand of them; and once you get to one thousand, you can make any wish, and it will come true.”

Q: “So do you only do this in a private setting, or do you do it with a bunch of other girls?”

A: “We did it in middle school—let’s see, we all had a bunch of paper and do it in front of each other, do it at home, or do it when we’re bored because we’re like, “I need to get that thousand!’”

Q: “Did you or anyone you know ever make it to a thousand stars?”

A: “I knew a couple people who did.  They were like, “Yay!  I got a thousand!”  And, I don’t know what their wish was….”

Q: “Do you know if their wishes came true though?”

A: “No.  But it made us really happy when, for presents, we’d give each other different designs of paper—there’s, like, the shiny foil; the little designs on them—we’d give them as gifts, and we’d be like, “Yes!”  There were clear ones….”

Q: “Can you describe briefly how you made the stars?”

A: “Someone gave me a paper, and I was like, “I don’t know how to do this.”  So, my older friends would teach me how to make it.  And I was like, “Oh my God, I’m learning something important!”  But, first you make a knot at one end, and then you keep folding over and over and over until you have a flat pentagon; and then you squeeze the corners.  And you get a 3D star.  And then you put it in those, like, collectible jars.”

My informant has demonstrated for me how to make these paper stars which are folk objects tied to the folk belief that if a person could make one thousand perfect paper stars, his or her wish would come true.  Though she has never achieved this goal, she told me that she was never an adamant believer of it in the first place—she only made them because they were fun way to pass the time and hang out with friends.

The folk object and folk belief have been commercialized over the years to target Asians—a folk object that makes its greatest profit by selling back to its own culture.  This item often targets tween to teenage girls who go on to eventually teach younger girls how to make these stars and tell them that they will be able to make a wish if they can make one thousand perfect stars.  I think that the stars play on the romantic idea that stars are lucky and somehow possess powers to grant a person’s wishes.  Perhaps the reason a wish can only be granted after a person has made one thousand perfect ones because it will demonstrate that the individual in question has demonstrated skills and patience worthy enough of one granted wish.  Or perhaps the creation of a thousand stars as perfect as the ones found only in the heavens proves that a person is “god-like” enough to have a wish granted—somehow being able to create these perfect stars demonstrates mastery over the heavens.

Bloody Mary and Biggie Smalls

Nationality: American
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Torrance, California
Performance Date: 4/26/2013
Primary Language: English

Bloody Mary is a widely known folklore where, typically, tween girls stand in front of a bathroom mirror with the lights out, a few lit candles, and recite “Bloody Mary” three times while staring at their reflection.  According to popular belief, Bloody Mary is supposed to appear in the mirror either to scratch the girls or write in blood on the mirror.

My informant, though a guy, has known of this popular belief since his time in middle school when his own girl-friends and younger sister had tried it to test its truth value.  The reason my informant had brought up this folklore, however, was not to interpret the obvious meaning of the Bloody Mary folklore (young girls adjusting to the idea of beginning puberty and menstruation), but rather to confess that he had taken part in a more masculine version of the folk belief: Biggie Smalls.

Played out the exact same way that Bloody Mary is done, Biggie Smalls (also known as Notorious B.I.G. in popular culture) is supposed to appear in the mirror and shoot the person who recites his name in the face.  My informant had not actually heard this folklore from anyone, but rather witnessed it on television in the Comedy Central show South Park.  Shortly after seeing this episode, he had convinced some younger, more gullible boys to try it out.  Unfortunately, Notorious B.I.G. did not appear in the mirror, nor did he shoot anyone in the face.

It makes sense that the Bloody Mary folk belief would be canonized in a very successful show like South Park because the folk belief is so well known.  South Park is known for taking its own spin on current events, pop culture, and politics, so being that Bloody Mary is a large part of tween girl pop culture, perhaps the writer was curious to know why no such folklore existed for the boys.  The play on the folklore is meant to poke fun at the absurdity of the belief as well as the boys’ feigned bravery as they take turns standing on the stool to look in the mirror and recite “Biggie Smalls.”  The absurd part of the whole thing is that the writer chose Biggie Smalls of all people to appear and kill innocent children—but I guess that is what makes the whole concept humorous.

Annotation: Parker, Trey. “Hell on Earth 2006.” South Park. Dir. Trey Parker. Comedy Central. NY, 25 Oct. 2006. Television.

“If you break your hip, you will die within a year”

Nationality: American
Age: 24
Occupation: Student (Medical School)
Residence: Honolulu, Hawaii
Performance Date: April 12th, 2013
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish, French

Informant Data: The informant is a second year medical student at John A. Burns School of Medicine with the University of Hawaii. She is Caucasian, and with a distant Irish and Russian lineage that she feels little connection to. She grew up in Seattle, Washington, and obtained an undergraduate degree in Bio-medical Engineering before starting her medical school journey. She is very enthusiastic about medicine and healing people.

Item: The saying that goes “if you break your hip, you will die within a year.” The following quotations are direct transcriptions of my dialogue with the informant, while the additional information provided is paraphrased.

Contextual Data: The informant first heard this expression in medical school, speaking one-on-one with a doctor about a hip-fracture case. The doctor regarded the saying as well-known within the medical world; however, not in any way a medical fact. The informant describes the phrase as “it’s not a fact, just a general indication that patients who break their hips don’t recover well. It’s really hard to rehabilitate from. They tend to recover from the hip replacement just fine, leave the hospital just fine, but they just never get back to their original strength and function. Some of it could be the long term complications from it, pulmonary embolism or fat embolism, but a lot of it is the weakened state, definitely not a hard-fast rule but you just know they will never be the same.”

The informant went on to explain that “doctors do not tell this to patients, and people don’t know because they recover fine from the surgery and get to go home.” The morbid saying is restricted to the medical community and serves as a reminder of how essential preventative measures are with elderly patients. Elderly people are often resistant to take certain precautions—“they don’t want to lose their independence, they don’t want to get a hand-rail in the bathtub or a railing on their staircase, or get rid of rugs in their house. Moral of the story is doctors need to remember to ask about rugs and nightlights and how well they see and do they have stairs and all the things that could be a risk factor.” While it may reduce one’s independence, they don’t realize how much one fall could change their life from then on.

The informant said that doctor she first heard it from in fact had a personal experience with the saying as well. He, already privy to the saying with his career, had his mother pass away not six months after a hip replacement. “While his family was rejoicing her return home post-surgery, the expression loomed in the back of his mind.”

“Don’t cut your baby’s hair before their first birthday”

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 14th, 2013
Primary Language: English

Informant Data: My informant is an International Relations major here at the University of Southern California. He is African-American and does not identify with any religious system of belief.

Item: The folk-belief that it is bad luck to cut your baby’s hair before its first birthday. The following quotations are direct transcriptions of my dialogue with the informant, while the additional information provided is paraphrased.

Contextual Data: My informant first heard this belief around the time he was in high school. He overheard his mother and her colleagues mention it, and when he inquired to its veracity he remembers their light-hearted affirmations. “They seemed to think of it lightly, but still as a solid parenting rule.” When asked what would happen, according to the belief, if one were to cut their child’s hair prior to their first birthday, he was a little unclear. “I always just assumed bad luck, not for the parent but for the child, in health or development, or perhaps it prophesies a future of horrible hair for the kid.” He continued on to explain that in the African-American community, there is a strong fear of coarse and hard to manage hair, and that perhaps this belief is an attempt to evade such . Additionally, the roots of the saying could be traced to a more evolutionary position, in which hair served a principal role of keeping the child warm, and cutting a baby’s hair would indicate potential illness or vulnerability. The informant continued on to say that he felt it common “in the African American community that superstitions contribute a great deal, whether consciously or otherwise, to how individuals conduct themselves in their everyday lives.” While this may be valid for many groups, the informant’s resolute acknowledgment of such a facet of his own community speaks to its prevalence. When asked if he agreed with the position of this being a parenting rule to abide, he replied, “I cannot think of a substantial reason why it would be valid, at least in modern day. So yeah, if my kid needs a haircut before their first birthday, I wouldn’t deny them that on the account of superstition.”