Category Archives: Game

“Orange you glad I didn’t say banana?”: Knock Knock joke

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Residence: California
Performance Date: 2/16/23
Primary Language: English

Original Text:

Informant: “Knock knock.”

Collector: “Who’s there?”

Informant: “Banana.”

Collector: “Banana who?”

Informant: “Banana.”

Collector: “Banana who?”

Informant: “Orange”

Collector: “Orange who?”

Informant: “Orange you glad I didn’t say banana again?” 

Context: The informant is 18 and a freshman at USC studying Theater and Anthropology. They state that they “learned this on the bus in elementary school”. They would use it to prank their friends and get a good laugh while in between school activities or on the playground. The informant even laughed while telling the joke to me in this current day. 

Analysis: The informant is a white American that went to public school in Barrington, Illinois. Knock Knock jokes are popular in America, specifically with younger children. The typical format goes as follows. The joke teller begins by saying, “Knock knock”, to which the listener responds “Who’s there”. The teller can then say “x” (any word or phrase), and in response, the listener says “x who?”. The teller then delivers the punch line. However, this particular joke is a bit of a trick joke, designed to stump the listener as to why the joke teller keeps saying “banana”. The phrase “Knock Knock” refers to knocking on the door of one’s home, announcing your presence. The practice of knocking is common, but not wholly universal. This joke reveals one proper way to announce your presence in America, as well as the ideal of privacy. The fruits mentioned in the joke (bananas, oranges) are common in American public school lunches, as well as being cultivated often in the Americas. 

Avocado Rhyme Game (with Hand Motions)

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Residence: California
Performance Date: 2/16/23
Primary Language: English

Original Text: “Avocado is the name of the game, if you mess up, you must have a word to say”

Hand Motions/Gestures:

  1. Both people clap their own hands together 
  2. Both people clap each other’s right hands together 
  3. Both people clap each other’s left hands together 
  4. Both people clap their own hands together 
  5. Both people intertwine their fingers and press their palms out into the other’s palms 

Context: The informant is an 18-year-old white American from Barrington, Illinois. They are a freshman at USC, studying Theater and Anthropology. They learned this rhyme game from their older sisters, who learned it on the elementary school playground. The informant describes it as : “a rhyme with motions to go along with it”. If you mess up the motions or the rhyme, you pick another word to replace “avocado”, and repeat the rhyme as usual. The informant would regularly play this game with friends at their public elementary school with friends to pass the time.

Analysis: Hand games with rhymes are common in American elementary schools. This particular hand game calls for the players to be able to think of a random word quickly to keep the game going if they mess up. A typical way that young American children learn to speak, read, and write properly in school is with long lists of vocabulary words and vocab tests. Everyday words, like different types of food (ex: avocado), are the most useful and common in these vocab activities. A game like this one that involves simple word recall might be especially appealing and familiar to children because of all the vocab words they are learning in their classes. Young children are also working on their motor skills, and visual/audio queues like clapping and rhyming are particularly stimulating and accessible. Rhymes are easier for people to remember, which explains why young children have an easy time remembering this game and executing it. 

Zapatito blanco, zapatito azul. Dime cauntos anos tienes tu: Children’s folklore/game/counting-out-rhyme

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 2/16/23
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Text: “Zapatito blanco, zapatito azul. Dime cuántos años tienes tú.” “Little white shoe, little blue shoe. Tell me how many years are you.” 

Context: EC’s relationship to this piece stems from her Mexican culture influenced by her childhood specifically within elementary school. Given that she attended a predominantly hispanic elementary school in Whittier California, EC would often hear this children’s folklore/game/counting-out-rhyme within her classmates ranging from kindergarten through third grade as they spoke Spanish. They would typically say the phrase and touch everyone’s shoe according to every syllable of the phrase as they were getting ready to play a game and the goal was to determine who was “it”; similarly to “bubble gum bubble gum in a dish, how many pieces to do wish?”. EC interprets this speech as a fun way to determine who was ‘it” when playing hide-and-seek or tag. She explains that this phrase takes her back to her childhood where playing with friends at recess showcased innocence. She interprets this phrase as a sweet, youthful, random, and nice sounding statement used to get the game started. 

Analysis: The cultural value that I see present within this children’s folklore/game/counting-out-rhyme relates to the customs of childhood within society. Despite the fact that this phrase has cultural value within the Mexican/Hispanic community, it ultimately revolves around the culture of childhood considering that it is a shared experience among many elementary aged children due to the variations in both English and Spanish. Given the fact that even though I am Mexican myself and have never heard this phrase being said at school, I often heard the English bubblegum version. Overall, I see this children’s game as a pure indicator of childhood innocence as it is a silly pre-game ritual used to determine the start of a game whether playing tag or hide-and-seek. I interpret this children’s folklore/game/counting-out-rhyme as a creative standpoint considering it has similar rhyming components and various alomotifs that connect to the English version that I grew up playing.

Star Tipping

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: Graduate Student
Residence: Berkeley, CA
Performance Date: 2/24/23
Primary Language: English

Background

My best friend was raised Mormon, and all of the kids at his local Mormon sect would play “star tipping” in the field behind the church at night. He states that he doesn’t remember any significance to the practice, just that it was a game that they played. To star tip, he and the other youth at the church would pick a star in the sky and stare at it while spinning around until they fell. He is a college student, transgender, and of European descent. He left the church when he turned 18.

Text


SS: At the specific church building that we went to, there was a big field in the back and at night after a youth activity, sometimes we’d go out there and do star tipping.

SS: And so you just pick a star. Sometimes it happened to be an airplane, but you pick a star and you look at it and then you spin in circles. Well, it’s still looking at it until you fall over and all the youth would do it.

SS: And I don’t know anything more about it other than it was something that we did.

Analysis

This might just be a simple children’s game, but it is notable for the fact that it was a game shared amongst the entirety of the children among their sect, with a specific name for it. Looking online, there doesn’t seem to be much by way of “star tipping” aside from a few Tumblr posts from an ex-Mormon who mentions it in the tags.

Aside from “entertainment value,” this game may have been encouraged by the church as a way for the youth to connect with each other. Given the celestial cosmology of the Mormon faith, in which those in heaven occupy the “heavens,” this might have been a way to connect a game/practice with Mormon belief. Aside from that, the game may have been a way to pass time in the long, often boring late hours of Mormon seminary.

Rattlin’ Bog

Nationality: American
Age: 25
Occupation: Real Estate Developer
Residence: New York City
Performance Date: 2/21/23
Primary Language: English

Text: SW explained his favorite drinking game, “Rattlin’ Bog” to me: A group of people gather in a circle, sitting around a table. Each person has a drink in their hand (and usually one or two more in case they finish their first one) and the song “The Rattlin’ Bog” is played, most commonly through a speaker connected to someone’s phone. This song has a chorus that repeats in between verses, and each successive verse adds another line to the last one, so that the verses get continuously longer as the song progresses. One member of the group drinks for the entire length of a verse, then after the chorus, the person sitting beside them in the circle drinks for the next verse, and this continues in a clockwise direction around the circle until the song’s completion. Thus, as the verses get continuously longer and build upon themselves, the successive people in the circle drink for longer. SW claimed that, by the last verse, it becomes a relatively difficult task. 

Minor Genre: Game

Context: SW is a 25 year old man who graduated from USC in 2021 and now lives in New York City. He told me that he first played this game when he was a senior at USC, and that he learned it from a friend who had known about the game for quite some time. This friend had told SW that the game supposedly originated in America, but that the song Rattlin’ Bog was a traditional Irish tune. 


Analysis: After hearing this, I thought of another drinking game called Thunder. The premise of Thunder is almost the same as Rattlin’ Bog, but it is set to the song Thunderstruck by AC/DC. Thunderstruck was released in 1990, while The Rattlin’ Bog is a traditional Irish folk song, in the Roud Folk Song Index as number 129. Thus, I wonder which game originated first, where each game originated, and finally, why SW’s friend postulates that Rattlin’ Bog the game was first invented in America – how could this be, and furthermore how could he know this? How one culture borrows from another and creates a new folk game out of an old folk song is fascinating. Generally speaking, this made me think of how drinking games tend to create their own cultures in the act of gathering, drinking, and playing a game with other people. Though there are two different national cultures supposedly concerned here (American and Irish), any drinking game also creates its own new folk group every time it is played, just with the people present. There are certainly variations between individual games (SW said that some people bang their fists on the table during the chorus, others clap for the drinker during the verses), and these small variations create folk groups of people who now play this specific way.