Category Archives: Customs

Customs, conventions, and traditions of a group

The Sucks

Nationality: Caucasian
Age: 20
Occupation: USC Student
Residence: Colorado
Performance Date: May 5, 2013
Primary Language: English
Language: Basic German

Ok, so in my high school winter guard team we had these things called sucks. We had them before every show we did. We also had them during color guard season, as like a pre-show ritual. We’d all eat jolly ranchers or life savers or whatever we got that week and say “Suck hard now so you don’t suck later.” And usually some sex jokes were made to lighten the mood, especially by my coach.
The main worry was finishing your suck before we started the show, cause you didn’t want to be sucking while you performed. But you have to finish it. And you actually had to suck hard in order to avoid the bad luck.

This is a high school Drama Club tradition that creates a sense of community through the team conducting a shared superstition to unite them before a performance. Although the “sucks” are a superstition that potentially has a placebo affect for the performers, much of the value of this folklore also comes from the inside jokes the club members would make based on the “suck” tradition. The dirty jokes and funny phrases helped solidify a team that would need to work harmoniously to pull off something as challenging and nerve-wracking as a high school play.

Booty Shaking, Vomit Dance for Good Mojo

Nationality: Caucasian
Age: 20
Occupation: USC Student
Residence: Colorado
Performance Date: May 4, 2013
Primary Language: English
Language: Some German

Before every competition, my high school theater group would circle up, and shake all of our bad mojo/energy into the center of the circle. It usually involved some brushing off, fake vomiting, booty-shaking, etc until our jitters were out of like two minutes had passed. Then we all visualized that nasty ball of nervous energy, lifted it up as a team, and and threw it far far away. It made us perform better.

This is a ritual the theater group would conduct. For superstitious reasons they would join in a type of bad mojo warding dance. Obviously this ritual provides comfort, marks the occasion of the competition, and provides a good placebo affect, but the biggest benefit is likely that the team members joining together to do an embarrassing dance provided the club with a strong feeling of community.

The Berkeley-Stanford Ax Story

Nationality: Caucasian
Age: 19
Occupation: Berkeley Biology Student
Residence: Berkeley
Performance Date: April 27, 2013
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

In the late 1800s, there were two universities in the Bay area. One of them was the University of California in Berkeley and the other was a small junior college across the bay founded by the criminal Leland Stanford Junior. These schools had a sports “rivalry.” Basically, each year, Cal would Beat the junior college in track, football, baseball, and other sports. The Junior college were running low on money to fund their failing sports program. They were so desperate that they were considering cutting down their redwood tree mascot. However, before they could, a meteor came down and crashed in the sewage at Stanford. This sewage splashed on the walls of all the buildings of the college. To this day, the buildings are still covered with this excrement which give the buildings at Leland Stanford Junior College their distinctive adobe appearance and smell. The female college students decided to take the meteor to a blacksmith and have it shaped into an ax They would use this ax to rally around during sports games. Only the female Stanford students were strong enough to carry it, and to this day, any male Stanford student who is able to lift the as, all by himself, will be crowned King of Bowdell Hall ( the women’s dorm). Anyway, the Stanfurdians brought this ax to the Cal-Stanford games with no effect. During the first football game with the ax, which Stanfurd naturally lost, some Cal athletes watching the game decided to steal the ax for a trophy. They were pursued by Stanfurd students to San Francisco where the Cal students had decided to get the handle taken off the ax,. There was a crazy pursuit through San Francisco. The police searched all Cal students on their way back to Berkeley through Oakland but were unable to find the ax since a Cal student hid it under an old girlfriend’s skirt. The next year, Stanford almost stole the ax back. Cal was just about to catch the Stanfurdians as they crossed a bridge on their way back to Palo Alto, but the bridge was raised before they could cross it. It was later discovered that the bridge operator was a suma cum laude graduate from the Leland Stanford Junior College Engineering school. It was the best job he could find. Cal and Stanford continued to steal the ax from each other. The robberies grew so intense that the leaders of the respective schools decided that the ax would be awarded to whoever won Big Game each year.

This funny story is told to freshman Berkeley students as a means of initiation. The story gives a history of the school, the Ax tradtion, and it’s age-old rivalry with the nearby Stanford, telling how these things came to be. Any true UC Berkeley student or alumni would be intimately familiar with this story and able to recount it as a member of the Cal community. Often the story is recounted over a bonfire to get students excited for the “Big Game.”

You can’t chase the cattle unless you eat more pancakes than me

Nationality: Caucasian, German-American
Age: 52
Occupation: Orthopedic surgeon
Residence: New Orleans, LA
Performance Date: 3/25/13
Primary Language: English
Language: German, Spanish

My informant is an orthopedic surgeon, who was born in Hawaii, lived in Texas, Long Beach California, and Virginia Beach. He is also in the Army Reserves. My informant now works in New Orleans, Louisiana. This is the same informant as the orthopedic surgeon and snipe hunt entries. My informant heard this story from his grandfather was from Germany.

Informant: My grandfather said there was a rule that I couldn’t chase the cattle on horseback unless I ate as many pancakes as he did. I was like 7 or something like that. I remember I had rain boots that were too big for me.

Rebecca: So what happened then?

I: He was going to go out and chase the cattle. I couldn’t go out with him. It was 4:30 or 5:30 in the morning, whenever farmers got up. He was saying that if I wanted to go with him I had to eat everything that he ate. And of course I did, not getting the hint, I ate as many pancakes as he did.

Rebecca: How many pancakes did you eat?

I: I ate around ten, I felt like I was going to throw up

Rebecca: did you get to go wit him them?

I: Yes I did, and so I got to chase the cattle with him.

Rebecca: Why do you tell this story?

I: I realized my grandfather didn’t want me to go with him and was trying to get rid of me. I think my grandfather really didn’t want to go horseback riding with him. But I was so stubborn that I ate as much as he did. That was the last time I ever got to ride horseback with my grandfather. They stopped using horses to bring cattle around. They started using machines, pick up trucks and things like that.

Rebecca: why didn’t he like you?

I: Because he was a grumpy old German farmer.

My informant’s grandfather told him this story when he was younger, but did not know that this was not an actual rule until he was much older, reflecting on the story. My informant tells this story because it reminds him of his childhood and his time spent with his grandfather before he died. I like this story because it shows how ideas or stories have the potential to turn into folklore if they are believed and passed down. This story was passed down between my informant and his siblings when they would visit their grandfather, so it was something that stayed within the family. However, my informant did say that he uses this excuse or similar requirements with his own children if he wants or doesn’t want them to do something. Being stubborn runs in the family, so if his child is challenged, they will most likely try to follow through. This story shows how this idea has been translated down generations from my informant’s German grandfather to now my informant’s own children.

Shabbat candles

Nationality: Jewish-American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/24/13
Primary Language: English
Language: Hebrew, Italian

“Just like how people light Shabbat candles, some people light two, but her family lights one for each kid. Now that my brother is older and has kids of his own, he now does the same thing and lights a Shabbat candle for each child.”

Lighting the Shabbat candles is very important to Judaism, and it is a law mandated by rabbinically. The candles are supposed to be lit around twenty minutes before the sunset to greet the Jewish Sabbath, or day of rest. The candles are to be lit by a woman, and after they are lit, a prayer should be said. The candles are lit to encourage peacefulness in the home and to honor the day of rest. Michal says that although Shabbat candles are not meant to be lit for every member of the family, she likes that her family’s tradition is more inclusive.

The linking between the Shabbat candles and domestic peace could be one reason Michal’s family decided to include every child in the lighting ceremony. If every child has a candle, then they are all included and everyone can help to support domestic peace in the home.