Category Archives: Game

Mary Worth

Nationality: American
Age: 62
Occupation: Professor
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 15 2015
Primary Language: English

When the informant was still growing up, he and his sister used to play a dare game at night. They would get a candle and take it upstairs. They would look for a dark room and place the candle at the center of it. When all that was set up, they would stare at the light and say “I believe in Mary Worth” 50 times. Supposedly, when they finished, she was supposed to come out and scare them. Supposedly, she looks the same as Bloody Mary. They actually never saw the face, but one time, he says, their mother pulled the shades down and one of them flew up. This was enough for them to believe in Mary Worth at that time.

Analysis: This dare game is similar to Bloody Mary in that it involves both a dark room and a woman apparition coming out after they say the name a repeated number of times. But in this case, instead of the usual 3, it increases to 50 and instead of a mirror, they stare into a candle. The differences seem to be local, as Mary Worth seems to be a substitute for Bloody Mary. Also it seems that the practice of the myth is not limited only to women, as the participant was a male and still believed in the story.

Snappa

Nationality: White
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Brea, California
Performance Date: April 29, 2015
Primary Language: English

Tanner is a student at USC and one of my closest friends. He grew up in Brea California, on the boarder of Orange Country. He was a part of both soccer, skate, and fishing communities as a kid, as well as the public school community and his local community. 

 

 

Preformance: “So, Snappa. It’s a game. and you have one cup in each corner of the table. And it’s 2v2. and you’re playing, and it involves a dice and each cup is filled up with beer. and you have 2 people on a team on one side and 2 people on a team on the other side. and the objective of the game is to throw the die a certain height up in the air, and make it land and roll through each of the cups on the other side. And whoever is playing defense at that point has to catch it with one hand. So, if it’s caught with one hand then there’s no point for the offensive team, and the game goes on. and then whoever the team was on defense at that point is now on offense. if it goes through the cups and they don’t catch it with one hand then it’s a point for the team that threw it in the air, and you keep going and play to what you want… you know… 5 – wait biz, 7, 11…”

Wait, what’s that? Why’d you say that?

“Biz? Biz is a word for 5. during the game you’re not allowed to say the number 5, which i’ve said like 4 times in a row now… so i would have to fill up my cup with beer and drink it 4 times. if you say the number biz… or 5… you have the drink your entire cup and then fill it up with a new beer. So, that’s that rule.”

Does everybody play by that rule?

“No actually, that’s only a SoCal thing. the game changes from across where you are. I mean here at USC we play and you have to say biz instead of the number 4 plus 1. but whenever i play with my buddies in NorCal they say 4 plus 1 all the time and i’m like “oh you just said it” and they’re like what are you talkin’ about. they don’t understand. that’s only a SoCal thing.”

 

 

Response: Snappa is a drinking game that is very popular in the fraternity culture at USC and across the country. It is a relaxed drinking game, unlike beer pong, where a single game can last anywhere from 20 minutes to multiple hours. The goal of the game is more to have fun and relax than to get drunk quickly, as the pace is fairly slow. There is no such thing as professional snappa, and there are different rules to play the game depending on where it is played. It’s really fun.

The Floor Is Lava

Anthony is a student at USC and one of my closest friends. He grew up in New York and moved to Los Angeles this year to study at USC. He comes from an Italian background.

 

 

Performance: “back in my kindergarden years, we used to have some pretty intense stuff going on. And one of the most intense things was the state of the floor that we walked around on on a daily basis. The floor contained a checkered pattern.. a black and red checkered pattern, and the red really represented lava to us kindergardeners. And it was not chill to step.. you could NOT step on the lava, or you would be persecuted by your peers, left out of your friend group, and potentially die. You will not advance in your social group if you step in the lava. SO you must hop, leap, and skip over the lava squares. You have to hop from black square to black square. You can also climb on furniture or people who had already fallen into the lava. As long as you didn’t touch the red portions of the floor you were safe.”

 

 

Response: This is a game that i myself played as a child as well. When I played however, the entire floor was lava, and using furniture was the only way to navigate it safely. It is a sort of classic children’s game, and requires a fair amount of imagination to play. It also works bette for kids because full grown adults cannot hop across furniture like chairs and couches as easily due to their size. In terms of significance perhaps the lava represents danger in the home, as it was almost always played in a living room or another room with more furniture. In Anthony’s case, where the game was a sort of social determinant, giving children a chance to prove that they are brave to one another.

The Annual Bike Parade and Block Party

Nationality: American
Age: 54
Occupation: professor, administrator for first generation students
Residence: Illinois, USA
Performance Date: April 19, 2015
Primary Language: English

Every year, everybody decorates their bikes for the bike parade. We actually did this with my cousins every summer in Hovokan, Wisconsin.

So I did block parties as a kid and we always played the same games so I wanted to bring them to our neighborhood for you guys to play. You remember, right? The egg on the spoon race, the three-legged race, the pudding eating contest, and the egg toss…

And yeah, that first block party, that first time is was just six families and now I think last year forty families came. I’m not in charge of it anymore, but I think it was forty.

Now they even make invitations for it. Generally the moms in their 30s in the neighborhood plan it and then, when your kids get to be a certain age…you don’t do it anymore.

But yeah, it started as more of a picnic. Mr. Russel was always the Keebler Elf of the parade Remember that? He used to get that costume from Jewel.

But the tradition of the bike parade, I also brought back from when I was a kid. So all the neighborhood kids now get their bikes or scooters and decorate them and then do a parade around the neighborhood to start off the block party. And we always used to put playing cards with clothes pins in the spokes to get it to click, so you guys do that too. And streamers are big, too.

context: 

I went home, where these traditions all occur, for Easter this year. The informant, my mother, and I discussed the neighborhood tradition of the block party, which happens every summer, one on one.

thoughts: 

I was familiar with all the games and the bike parade tradition, because I took all of them very seriously but I never knew the context or that the history behind it came from my mom’s childhood, as well.

It is interesting how the leadership changes depending on the ages of the kids of the moms involved.

Toys in mid-20th Century Croatia

Nationality: Croatian, American
Age: 71
Residence: San Pedro, California
Primary Language: Croatian
Language: English

Toys in mid-20th Century Croatia:

V.H.: We did not have many toys, we had one box, and dragged on a rape, and had fun like a wagon ride. Me and my sister and two, or three cousins together played this way.

 

V.H. recounts an experience of child lore that has left a lasting impression upon her.On the island that V.H. was raised, in Dalmatia, there was poverty. Children had to make due with what was available, and while there were not many toys, they fashioned toys out of available resources, such as the makeshift wagon described here.