“Looks like you’ve caught the sun.”
Analysis:
While the meaning of this saying seems quite obvious—to have caught the sun is to be sunburnt, but I had never heard of this phrase before. The informant has not lived in America for longer than two years, so I thought this saying originated from the UK, however, I cannot find any evidence to its origins.
The interviewer’s initials are denoted through the initials BD, while the informant’s responses are marked as PH.
PH: Every time that I’m blocking something, specifically when I’m like walking by the television and my mom is watching TV and then I get distracted, and I start watching, and I’m standing in front of the television, and she says “you’re a better door than window!” Like, “please move, you’re blocking my way.” But it’s like a cute thing that she says.
BD: Did she get it from anywhere?
PH: I don’t know! I think it is a normal saying, and I think her mom used to say it to her, but I’m not sure.
Analysis:
This piece of folklore is a very lighthearted metaphor. I have never heard it before, but it does make an awful lot of sense. It is interesting how the informant’s mother had likely heard it from her own mother, and I speculate this saying may be relegated to only their family. The use of doors and windows draws the mind to think of houses and buildings, which may be an effect the metaphor is going for.
CAMBODIAN GREETING // “CHOM-REAP-SUA”
Main Piece:
Growing up I was taught that greeting elders in Cambodian was very important. This might’ve been the first Cambodian word I ever learned. It is often regarded disrespectful if a Cambodian American, specially a millennial who does not recognize the importance of greeting in Cambodian to Cambodian elders.
It was a gesture of both hands formed in a prayer-like form (clasped) and head slightly bent while saying the hello greeting. (head slightly bent/bowed to the front) I remember there were times when I wouldn’t be sure if I needed to do it but then I would know when my mom whispers in my ear to bow.
Background Information:
Why do they know this piece?
A required tradition of respect growing up.
Where/Who did they learn it from?
My parents. (theyre from Camodia, immigrants)
What does it mean for them?
As an adult it means that I still have the ability to show respect to Cambodian elders and teach my friends their first word of Cambodian / first greeting in Cambodian.
Context of Performance:
Sitting inside friend’s room talking.
Thoughts:
It is interesting to note that this is very similar to my Chinese-Indonesian folk-principle/custom of respecting your elders. This is more specific in that there’s a specific gesture and saying involved (where my mother only told me to respect my elders…etc.), but I feel that this is a very common principle and core of Asian cultures, or at least the East….as well as perhaps some/most of Western cultures?
“In my third grade class we had a week where each student had to present a riddle to the class and see if the class could figure it out. That was a long time ago, so I don’t remember them all, but one was so absurd that I’ll never forget it. It was this boy in my class who usually didn’t say much. He got to the front with no paper of notes with the riddle on it and just began without any indication.”
“The riddle was.. ‘I was going on a trip to St. Ives when I met this man. This man had seven wives. Each of his wives had seven cats. Each cat had seven homes. Each home had seven balls of yarn. Each yarn had seven different thimbles. Each thimble had seven different boxes. Each box had seven different shelves. How many people or things did I run into on my way to St. Ives?’.”
“So immediately I see all my classmates on scratch pieces of paper writing 7×7 over and over or 7+7×7 or something like that. I remember not even wanting to put in the effort to figure out how many sets of seven there were. People started punching numbers into their calculators and shouting out random answers. They all started off being really high numbers because the riddle made it sound like there were so many things. After a few minutes of chaos, our teacher took back control of the class. She then started to chuckle at us and said that we needed to pay more attention rather than get lost in the numbers.”
“The boy then had the ability to tell us we were all wrong. ‘The answer is 1’ he said. We all looked around at each other like what? How could the answer possibly be 1? He further explained that the most important part of the riddle was the beginning. He met one man on the way to St. Ives, not all of his wives and their kittens and the kittens yarn. I remember feeling played! It was so easy but we all made it so difficult.”
My interpretation of the story:
In the riddles I have seen throughout my life, I can usually find a common theme of the answer was a lot easier than I originally had imagined. I think that there is something in our minds that allow us to make things more complicated, especially when we think the answer is supposed to be complicated. This riddle reminds me of a similar one about a bus. It begins by saying that you are driving a bus with 18 people on it. It continues by saying that there are all these stops and this many people get on and that many people get off at each stop. I remember listening to it and thinking that I have to keep track of all of these numbers to get the riddle right. The end question of the riddle was “What is the color of the bus drivers eyes?” When I finally heard what I was aiming to figure out, I was annoyed because the whole time I had been focusing on the number of people getting on and off the bus at each stop, that I couldn’t even remember who was driving the bus and couldn’t possibly know the color of their eyes. The part to focus on of the riddle was the beginning, that stated I was the one driving the bus, and there for the answer to the riddle was the color of my own eyes, something so simple. Riddles have a way of causing distractions to take the person being questioned’s focus away from the part that will give them the answer. This can be seen a lot through magicians also. The trick to magic is distraction and confusion, which allows the person who is watching to think that things are actually happening when, in fact, they are not.
“When I was little I always heard different versions of the riddle ‘Eenie Meenie Miney Moh’. It was a rhyme that was supposed to help you decided between different options. You would say the rhyme and point to a different object or thing for each word in the rhyme and whatever thing you were pointing too on the last word was the object that was chosen. It started to get more complicated though, because I would keep hearing different endings being added from different people.”
“So it started off like ‘eenie meenie miney moh, catch a tiger by the toe, if he hollers let him go’ and that was how I started doing it originally. Then different additions started to be created, I think because people weren’t happy with what it landed on so they just kept going with words that rhymed. The first additional ending was ‘my mother said to pick the very best one and you are it’. So everybody in my lower school started adding this on to the end so it seemed like it was just how the saying went. Then another addition was added and that was ‘red white and blue I choose you’. This seemed a little extra to me, but of course I still did it. After that I cut myself off with the additional endings, but I continuously hear other ones being added or completely different ones. One I heard recently was ‘take me to the movie theaters and I’ll by a chocolate bar for you to take me to the movie theaters right now’. They all followed the original tune of Eenie Meenie Miney Moh, so it was easy to follow along if you just wanted to add another ending.”
“My family was Swiss growing up, and I didn’t learn this from my mom. I just kind of heard it around and in school and picked it up on my own. I spent the majority of my childhood in Texas, so I probably learned most of the different endings there. Currently, I live in Los Angeles, and hear through my children and their friends so many different knew endings that rhyme.”
My interpretation of the story:
Growing up, I also had heard many different renditions of the riddle or rhyme “Eenie Meenie Miney Moh”. In this story, what stood out to me was the tellers recognition of the additional endings being for people that didn’t necessarily want what they got. I agree with this assumption, because I personally remember being a kid and not liking exactly what I got and adding another ending or not adding one because I wanted what I first landed on. Because the riddle or rhyme “Eenie Meenie Miney Moh” does not seem to have one origin and is used over most of the country and most likely the world, it is not surprising that it is altered differently throughout different places. I believe that in geographical terms, there should be similar additional endings for people from or in similar places. On the other hand, people are constantly moving and sharing their cultures and traditions with other people, so it is not alarming to see so many different additional endings in one place. Because of this, I don’t think that you can specifically assign the origin of one ending to a place, and that only the original Eenie Meenie Miney Moh part of the rhyme is perpetually consistent across the world.