Category Archives: Game

Ring Around the Rosy

Nationality: United States
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Anglese
Performance Date: 28APR2015
Primary Language: English
Language: None

Informant Background:

This informant is a senior at USC in the Naval ROTC program. The daughter of a navy chaplain, she spent a lot of her life traveling. Despite having to move, she still claims she had a every enjoyable childhood and made many lifelong friends because of it. She can easily recount the many games and stories her and her friends would play.

Informant’s Story:

“I’m sure everyone’s heard about ring around the rosy. You play it when you’re really little. We all grab hands, side hop to the left and sing the song. [me: can you sing it?] Haha, sure I guess. it goes ‘ring around the rosy, a pocket full of posies, ashes, ashes, we all fall down,’ and when you say ‘we all fall down,’ everyone drops to the ground.”

Analyses:

This little game has been around for centuries and originates from 17th century England when the great plague was in full swing. It has two versions; the American “ring around the rosy” and British “ring a ring o’ roses” and is about the stages of an infected person. Both versions are identical but have a one line difference (besides the wording of the first line)

British

Ring a ring o’ roses,
A pocket full of posies,
A tissue A tissue

We all fall down.

American

Ring a round the rosie,
A pocket full of posies,
Ashes! Ashes!

We all fall down.

When Someone had the plague, a common symptom was a rosy rash, and constant sneezing. Those living around the sick and dying would carry a pocket full of posies in order alleviate themselves from the smell of death. The English version refers to tissues, referring to the sneezing caused b the illness, but the American version is slightly darker, with a christian connotation. the phrase “ashes-to-ashes” comes from a verse in the bible and is used to burial rites. The final line of both is “we all fall down” meaning death. This is a prime example of how the morbidity of past is forgotten, yet that which it has created is not. By that I mean, it’s interesting how something so seemingly innocent and used by young children is about the gruesome death of thousands and no one seems to realize.

King’s cup

Nationality: American
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 28
Primary Language: English
Language: Chinese

Background on informant: Informant is a senior at USC, studying philosophy, politics and law. He is from New York City.

Informant: I learned how to play it when I was in high school from my friend Andrew. We all used to play King’s Cup with a deck of cards in the dorm room. We would get a deck of cards and you put the deck of cards in a circle. Each person picks a card and depending on what each card is you have to do a certain thing:

If I pick up a three that means you have to drink.

If I pick up a two that means I have to drink.

etc…

I didn’t have any special codes with my friends that I know of. It’s just one of those things that gets passed along by word of mouth. I don’t know where Andrew heard it, but I assume he heard it from someone else. I don’t think he went out of the way to find this drinking game. Someone must have told him.

Analysis: This was interesting because the informant had such a strong memory of how this folklore was first performed, remembering who exactly had taught it to him and in what setting. That suggests that folklore serves a larger communal purpose that goes beyond the game as a leisure activity. It is interesting too that he learned this in high school before he could technically drink and his means for learning the technically illicit game was through folklore. Perhaps he and his friends didn’t want to write down the game or transmit it through writing but were comfortable performing it and spreading that way, in a way far more ephemeral/spontaneous than an authored record.

Kario Mart drinking game

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 28, 2015
Primary Language: English

The informant is a 21 year old student at USC studying Vocal Arts.  He lives in a house with some friends and they have a copy of Mario Kart.  This game turns Mario Kart into a drinking game.

“Kario Mart is a drinking game.  You are playing Mario Kart but the objective is to finish an entire beer or your drink, whatever it may be, by the time you cross the finish line.  However, because you can not drive while drinking, if you want to drink your drink, you have to set your controller down and effectively stop driving to drink at all.  So you’ll have to start of drinking, or however you want to do it, set your controller down, finish your drink before you cross the finish line.  Otherwise you have to take a shot.”

“I feel like this game is fun for a few rounds until everyone is buzzed well enough that you  forget that you need to play the drinking game and you just play Mario Kart.

“One of my friends told me this game. I would play this game on a weekend evening just hanging out with a small group of friends. You know when you are like ‘what else are we going to do? We’re going to play Mario Kart”.  But you were going to drink anyway so why not incorporate the drinking into the game.”

Analysis:

This game incorporates several elements of modern 20-somethings’ culture.  One element is that there is a strong affinity towards and enjoyment of the games of their youth.  There is a lot of nostalgia in playing video games that you enjoyed when you were young.  This enjoyment is only amplified by a light buzz.

Another element that it incorporates is the understanding that driving while under the influence is dangerous.  It both acknowledges this, by having the rule of the game to be that you technically can’t “drink and drive”, and makes light of it, as one of the main points of the game is to be amused as players’ skill levels drop while they drink more.

“Mishka, mishka, mushka… Katikatushka!”

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA; Ukiah, CA
Performance Date: 4/23/15
Primary Language: English

One day while hanging out with my friend, I was being playful by pretending to play the childish game of “peekaboo.” To my surprise, she responded by saying, “mishka, mishka, mushka… Katikatushka!” Then she went on to explain that this is a Russian kids’ game similar in concept to “peekaboo.” When she first explained it to me, she thought that “mishka” meant “mouse” and that  “katikatushka” meant “cat.” Therefore, the literal translation was supposedly, “mouse, mouse, mouse… cat!” But as I will explain after my interview with her, it turns out that’s not exactly the case.

Informant: “So, ‘mishka’ is a game that my dad used to play when I was very little. I would sit on his lap, and it’s the cat and mouse game, so… ok, it goes, you get really small like a mouse, and you go “mishka, mishka, mushka… and then you get really big and tickle the person and you go like, KATIKATUSHKA!!” which apparently, I asked my Russian friend what that means, and I think one of them means ‘bear.’ Or it means ‘big bear’ so maybe my dad lied to me… he didn’t know the actual names. So maybe it’s like ‘mouse, mouse, mouse, BIG BEAR!’

Collector: “Instead of ‘cat’?”

Informant: “Yeah. But he always thought it was ‘cat and mouse.’”

Collector: “Where does your dad get it from, do you know?”

Informant: “Probably his mother. His mother was a gregarious Russian woman.”

Collector: “Is this maybe a traditional Russian nursery rhyme or child’s game?”

Informant: “Yeah, I’ve heard other people who are Russian know of it as well”

Collector: “Do you know of this existing in other languages, or other cultures?”

Informant: “I haven’t heard of it, have you?”

Collector: “No, I haven’t either”

Informant: “But I think the game of surprise is always common…”

Collector: “Yeah, just in different forms”

Informant: “Yeah, like ‘peekaboo,’ similar…”

Collector: “And when you were little, was this just supposed to be a scary little, messing with you as a little kid game? I mean it sounds playful, but do you think it had any other purpose other than just pure playfulness?”

Informant: “Yeah, I think it was a way to connect… I think it was something to do, like ‘I’m bored, what do you wanna do?’ ‘I don’t know… let’s play the cat and mouse game!!’ you know, cause you tickle each other and you laugh! And then it ends in tickle fight”

After interviewing the informer, I looked up the meaning of “mishka,” “mushka,” and “katikatushka,” to almost no avail. There seem to be many words with similar spellings and pronunciations, but different meanings in Russian, Slovenian, and Bulgarian. So instead of attempting to translate from Russian to English, I used google translate to find the Russian words for mouse, cat, and bear. According to google, mouse is “mysh,'” pronounced “moosh.” Cat is “kot,” pronounced “khot.” And bear is “nesti,” pronounced “neesty.” So I’m not sure how my friend’s dad’s game got translated interpreted at cat and mouse, because although there is a slight resemblance to the words I found via google translate, they seem too far off to be correct. Perhaps there’s variations of the same word depending on the tense and other grammatical rules. Or perhaps the language of the game got mixed up as it was passed down generations of Americans from Russian descent.

The Angry Elf

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA; Ukiah, CA
Performance Date: 4/23/15
Primary Language: English

While talking about family traditions, my friend started talking about a peculiar custom her family does for Christmas.

Informant: “The angry elf comes on Christmas Eve and, um, he like, he’ll hit you with a soft present. It’s usually pajamas wrapped in newspaper, and like it’ll be when you’re not looking, you’ll get hit behind the head and… one time my cousin Lucas like he saw the elf and he jumped out the window to go find the elf. He like, dive rolled out the window. He opened the window to go catch the elf. He never caught the elf.”

Collector: “But like, obviously someone…”

Informant: “Yeah, as I grew up I figured it was my mom, and my brothers. And we still do it like, well, the elf came! And like, I’ll do it to my parents now. Its fun”

Collector: “Where does your mom come from? Like, does she throw it through the window?”

Informant: “No, she wasn’t actually outside the window but like when my cousin chased after the elf, he was like putting on a whole show, like ‘I think he ran outside the window!’”

“Oh, I see”

Informant: “It was intense”

Collector: “Is this something that just happens within your family, or have you heard of anyone else doing this?”

Informant: “I’ve never heard of anyone else doing this”

Collector: “Do you know how it started?”

Informant: “I don’t. Probably when the three kids were there. It was me and my two brothers. It was all like, all my house. Like everyone just put on this big show. Probably the idea of elves came from the Waldorf School that they went to, because you leave your shoes out, and then on Christmas eve the elves fill your shoes with candy. I think that’s a German tradition.”

Collector: “And you’ve done this ever since you can remember? This angry elf thing?”

Informant: “Mhm”

It’s interesting to see that different families have different Christmas gift-giving traditions. Some have Santa Claus, others elves, and others have both. It’s also interesting to see how families continue traditions of magical gift-giving beings long after their kids have grown up and no longer seriously believe in these beings, in order to continue a family tradition.