Category Archives: Folk Beliefs

Hockey: After a Trade, The Player Must Be Shaved

Nationality: Sri Lankan-American
Age: 34
Occupation: Teacher
Residence: Northridge, CA
Performance Date: March 2012
Primary Language: English

“I’ve heard that in the NHL, when a player is traded, his new teammates shave him from head to toe.”

My informant says he first heard of this ritual when he was on a hockey team while in high school in the 1980s.  He says that hockey is full of superstitions so initiation rituals are common, especially for rookies and traded players, but not necessarily for hockey veterans.  Some “newbies” go willingly and others are sometimes forced by their teammates.  He also explained that if this ritual is still practiced, it is one of the mild forms of initiation; others can be pretty sexual, grotesque and/or humiliating.  Nevertheless, this hazing tradition appears to be a type of purification ritual that literally cleanses the player of anything and everything he physically had while playing for his previous team.

“If You Toss a Penny Off the Top of the Empire State Building, It Will Kill a Person Walking on the Street Below”

Nationality: Polish-Dutch-French-American
Age: 24
Occupation: Student
Residence: Pasadena, CA
Performance Date: April 2012
Primary Language: English

My informant first heard this “fun fact” when she was about seven-years-old.  It was a common piece of information that was spread across the playground.  It is such a common urban legend that most of my other informants and I, too, have heard the same declaration.  From when she was younger, her general understanding is that when dropped from the top balcony of the Empire State Building, the penny will gradually increase in velocity.  As it gets closer to the ground, it will reach the speed of a bullet.  If by chance the penny strikes a person in the head, the penny will go straight through and kill the person.

 

She also says that there are variations of the legend: it will put a hole in the cement sidewalk, the coin will break to pieces, and even, that it has been used to purposefully kill someone.  She laughed when she said the last variant saying: “I have no idea how or why someone would strategically plan to kill someone with a penny… on the top of the Empire State Building.  You wouldn’t even be able to identify the right person from that high up! [laughs] …I don’t know, it was just something I heard from grade school.”

 

My informant told me that she remembered this “fact” so well that when she actually went to New York when she was in high school, she asked one of the tour guides if it had ever happened: “The guide told me that he got that one a lot, but he reassured me that it wasn’t even possible.  Supposedly, since the building is so tall, the updraft will slow the penny’s speed as it falls and won’t cause any damage.  He also said, though, that people have thrown pennies off the side in the past, but they end up landing on other terraces on the lower floors.”

 

After hearing this, I was curious and did a little more research.  After checking a few different sources, it turns out the urban legend is in fact completely false.  According to the book Empire State Building, a penny tossed from the top of the Empire State Building will never even hit the ground.  The updraft effect pushes falling objects against the building and end up falling only a few stories below.  The coins that are dropped from the 86th floor simply land on the 80th floor and are collected by electricians when they change the lights on the outer side of the building.  Furthermore, according to an experiment that was performed for the ABC show “20/20,” even if the pennies dodge the 80th floor landing, the pennies are still harmless to pedestrians below.  After sending a large weather balloon into the air with an attached penny dispenser, Louis Bloomberg – a University of Virginia physics professor – spit the pennies one by one through a remote control device.  Several pennies hit Bloomberg but “it was like getting hit by a bug…it was noticeable, but nothing more…these things are just fluttering down.”  Another experiment was performed on the show “Mythbusters” that tested the degree of impact at terminal velocity (the speed at which the penny would fall if no other factors such as friction acted upon the coin) on asphalt, cement, concrete and an anatomically correct human head replica.  The experiment revealed that the penny would not penetrate any surfaces.  As far as the human skull, a penny at terminal velocity may break the skin, but will not break through or fracture the skull.  So as the crew of Mythbusters would say, this urban legend is “busted!”

 

 

Hyneman, Jamie, and Adam Savage. “Mythbusters: Penny Drop MiniMyth.” Mythbusters. Discovery Channel, 2 Feb. 2011. Web. 12 Apr. 2012. <http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/mythbusters-penny-drop-minimyth.html>.

 

Peterson, Sheryl. Empire State Building. Mankato, MN: Creative Education, 2007. Print.

 

Stossel, John, and Gena Binkley. “Can a Penny Dropped From a Building Kill a Pedestrian Below?” ABC News. ABC News Network, 03 May 2007. Web. 12 Apr. 2012. <http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=3131332>.

A Climate Change Scientist and a Climate Change Denier Walk into a Bar…

Nationality: Irish-Italian
Age: 22
Occupation: Film Maker
Residence: Northridge, CA
Performance Date: March 2012
Primary Language: English

“A climate change scientist and a climate change denier walk into a bar.  The scientist takes a seat at the bar and orders a glass of their finest scotch.  The bar tender brings him his scotch and the climate change denier asks, “What’s the percentage?”  The bartender turns to the denier and says,  “90 proof.”  The climate change denier then slams his hand down on the table, throws down his drink and storms out of the bar.  The climate change scientist then turns to the bartender and says: “Damn deniers! Even when you show ‘em the proof, they still don’t believe it!”

 

My informant first heard this joke on NPR (National Public Radio) a few years ago and thinking that it was pretty comical, he decided to share the joke.  Although a fairly recent topic, the joke may have been adapted from previous global warming jokes.  The issue and the term “global warming” has gradually received more media coverage since its first mention and prediction in Wally Broecker’s 1975 paper and when Jim Hansen’s famous stated in 1988 that “global warming is here” (Real Climate).  The debate over global warming is ongoing and is even a debate topic in the 2012 presidential race.  The joke, of course, takes the side of global warming scientists who have presented multiple scientific studies to confirm the presence of global warming, but despite the evidence in favor of the phenomenon, some skeptics continue to deny its existence.  The joke illustrates some critics’ denial and defensive attitudes toward global warming.  Since it is a joke, it depends on lumping all skeptics into a single category of ignorant defiance.  Over decades, a great deal of scientific reports has been published in favor of global warming and yet it is still a sensitive subject.  While the global warming debate has not been fully confirmed, the joke on global warming confirms the fact that folklore is adaptable and integrates social issues and other subject matter that apply to the modern age.

 

“Happy 35th Birthday, Global Warming!” RealClimate: Climate Science from Climate Scientists. WordPress, 28 July 2010. Web. 24 Apr. 2012. <http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/07/happy-35th-birthday-global-warming/>.

Superstition

Nationality: caucasian
Age: 75
Residence: Redlands, CA
Performance Date: 3/25/12
Primary Language: English

This superstition my mother used to tell me about dishrags. She believed that whenever you dropped a dishrag, that meant that someone would come knock on your door soon. This could happen any time of the day, any time of the year, just in general someone would be there soon.

I’m not sure if this is a good or bad superstition but it seems pretty general and forward. I do not know if this ever comes true or if it means something else. If it were to mean something else I believe that it would mean that right when you are doing a lot and moving a lot and are really busy, someone will come and visit you right then. I picture a housewife moving swiftly in the kitchen and dropping her dishrag while busily cooking and being flustered when the doorbell rings right as she picks it up. So it could be a metaphor for when you’re busy something else will come along too.

Folk Belief

Nationality: caucasian
Age: 75
Residence: Redlands, CA
Performance Date: 3/25/12
Primary Language: English

My stepdaughter’s ex-husband married a Native American woman and they had a baby together. Since most Native Americans have extremely straight hair, she did not want her daughter to have this hair so she found an old folk way of making it wavier for when she grew up. Right after the baby was born,  she went out to the pastures to where the cows lived and took back some manure. She took the manure and rubbed it on her baby’s head because this was supposed to ensure that when her hair grew in, it would be wavy or curly and not straight like traditional Native American hair.

How the hair grew in I don’t know, but this belief was passed down through Native Americans to use on their children to avoid the extremely straight hair of their people.