Category Archives: Game

La bella lavanderina

Nationality: Italian
Age: 57
Occupation: Teacher
Residence: Bologna
Performance Date: 04/13/2021
Primary Language: Italian

Main piece:

“La bella lavanderina che lava i fazzoletti

Per i poveretti della città.

Fai un salto, fanne un altro,

Fai la giravolta, falla un’altra volta.

Guarda in su, guarda in giù

Dai un bacio a chi vuoi tu”

Transliteration: 
The beautiful washerwoman who washes the handkerchiefs for the needy of the city. Jump, jump another time, do the twirl, do it again. Look up, look down, give a kiss to whoever you want. 

[the transliteration comprehends the translation as well, as there is not a deeper meaning that goes beyond the words themselves]

Background:

S.C.: This was a nursery rhyme that I learnt when I was very young and that I sang both at home and at school to..well, first of all to understand that there were people more needy than me that could and should be helped and, also to transform a topic, which for a child can be quite unknown, into something happier and more easily approachable. Children would associate a serious issue to a form of gameplay, to a moment of carefreeness.

V.S.: Where did you learn it?

S.C.: I think my mum thought me it, but then I used to sing it with my friends at school..a bit everywhere…everyone knew it. To be happy and do something together, this rhyme was always performed 

Context:

I myself knew this rhyme since really young, and we were in the informants’s house when she mentioned and performed this.  

Thoughts:

As my informant pointed out, this is a piece taken from what would be defined as children’s folklore and which has been passed down from generation to generation; as a matter of fact, my grandmother used to do it, and so does my cousin’s son who is now three. Despite the first impression the lyrics or the performance could give, this practice done’t involve a particular gender, but it is, instead, carried out both by male and female kids. This is not particularly unexpected, as the majority of gender-based games and plays usually start to be performed when infants are 6 or 7 years old, while this little kinesthetic song is typically learnt and ‘enacted’ some years before. I use the term kinesthetic as this nursery rhyme is most of the times performed with a dance, which basically consist in following and doing what the lyrics of the song tells. So when it says jump, children jump; when it says do the twirl, children do it, and so on until the end of the song, in which each child chooses who to give the kiss. In this way, another interesting aspect is brought to light, which is the young approach of children to the world of adults. Even if indirect and unconscious, the kiss represents a turning point, a means for approaching the other sex since a really young age. 

However, this isn’t the only grown-up thematic children are put in contact with: as my informant highlighted, indeed, children are also introduced -in a joyous and playful manner- to more serious and relevant topics, like poverty, altruism and philanthropy. 

‘Joota Chori’: Dipping Your Toes Into a New Phase of Life

Nationality: Indian
Age: 52
Occupation: Homemaker
Residence: Mumbai, India
Performance Date: 04/03/2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Hindi

The Interviewer will be referred to as ‘I’, and the informant as ‘S’. Translations for Hindi words will be italicised and in parentheses. The Informant is a 52-year-old Punjabi mother, born and raised in North India. ‘Joota Chori’ essentially means stealing shoes.

I: So, we have many wedding rituals and games, and practical jokes are part of that. Could you describe one?

S: Yeah, this is during the wedding ceremony, or you could say through and post it, but somewhere during the wedding ceremony, when the — both the groom and the bride have to remove their footwear to get onto the… the podium for the phere (Seven circumambulations performed by the bride and groom during Indian weddings), the sacred… the holy ritual, the seven rounds we take. So, at that point in time, the girl’s sisters and friends, they get together and hide the groom’s shoes. Basically, to seek ransom in return, at some point, and make some money, some cash. And the boy’s brothers and friends are attempting to manage to make sure they don’t manage that, and if they do manage it, they’re attempting to kind of… look for the shoes and find them to save that money. It becomes a major, a big thing, good fun thing, and mostly the girl’s sisters and friends make money. The guy comes practically prepared for it [she laughs], that x amount will mostly have to be given.

I: So, would you say it’s kind of like a rite of passage, in that sense?

S: Rite of passage, introducing each other to the families, the families and friends, yeah. Testing them and joking around, getting familiar.

Analysis:

Weddings are often known to involve the liminal space, the transition period where one person is moving from a certain identity (the family they were born into), to another one (the family they are marrying into). This liminal space is between the stages of departure from the initial and arrival and acceptance into the latter, and therefore, practical jokes and rituals are part of the experience, even in Indian weddings. Here, the practical joke is, as my informant states, a rite of passage, a welcoming of both parties into their counterpart families and communities, and they also have the auxiliary purpose of acquainting both families and friend-groups with each other in a lighthearted, fun way. This wedding game, a practical joke, signifies the introduction of the two families at the wedding, as well as the initiation of the bride and groom into these families, since the people being ‘pranked’ are not exactly entirely moved away from their previous community, and neither are they fully integrated into the new one.

Bo Bo Ski Rotten

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Chicago, IL
Performance Date: April 5th, 2021
Primary Language: English

Background

The informant, Katie, is a childhood friend of the interviewer. They grew up next door to each other and have been friends for sixteen years.

Context

Katie discusses a childhood game that her and the interviewer used to play with their friends on the playground in Elementary and Middle School. 

Transcript 

“We would all sit in a circle at recess, usually a huge group of us. Each person would put their left hand under the person sitting next to them’s right hand, so if we were sitting next to each other I’d put my left hand under your right hand. Then with the right hand, you put your right hand over the other person’s left hand. We all sing a song and on each beat you take your right hand and swing it around to hit, or more so clap, the person next to you’s hand left hand. For example, when person A’s hand is hit by person Z, then person A must hit the person B’s hand, then person B must hit person C, and so on and so forth, going on in a continuous circle. It’s basically hot potato, but you are passing a hit, instead of a potato. 

The song goes like this [verse one]: Bo bo ski rotten totten / I- I say boys are rotten / Itty bitty rotten totten / Bo bo ski rotten totten / Bo bo ski rotten totten. 

Then the tempo speeds up and you go really fast.

 Verse two goes: Mickey mouse had a house / Donald Duck messed it up / Who will pay the consequences.

Then it speeds up even more.

Verse three goes: Y O U spells you and you are out.

You do not want to get your hand hit on the word ‘out’, otherwise you will be out of the game. So you can try and move your hand really fast to not get out. If the person who was supposed to hit you, hits their own hand instead, because you moved yours off of there’s fast enough, than that person is out instead of you. It’s a really fun, competitive game. We played it a lot at girl scouts too. In middle school, if boys ever played with us we would change the line “boys are rotten” to “fish are rotten” so that the boys would think we were cool and didn’t hate them.”

Thoughts

This game was really fun, I remember playing it a lot. It is interesting how much folklore happens on the school playground. This is just one example of many hand / song game combos we would play. I’m not sure how we originally learned about it. I assume, we learned it from some girl on the playground, who learned it from someone else, who learned it from someone else, ect. When I moved from Chicago to Los Angeles for college I found myself one night talking with my LA friends about this game. They knew the general premise, but had different words for the song that I can no longer remember. This was fascinating to me as it shows how folklore is so malleable and can adapt and change with every person who tells it.

La Cucaracha – Spanish Folk Song

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: College Student
Residence: California, USA
Performance Date: 05/02/2021
Primary Language: English

Context:

Informant JA was an undergraduate student at the University of Southern California at the time of this collection. JA was born in the San Francisco Bay Area, but their dad’s side of the family originates from Mexico. When JA was young, their great-grandmother would sing a Spanish folk song while playing a game with JA when they were about three years old. I spoke with JA to see what they could remember about their experience with this song.

Text:

Lyrics:

“La cucaracha, la cucaracha, da-na-na-na-na-na-na” (repeated until game was over)

Accompanying Game:

While JA’s great-grandmother would sing La Cucaracha, she would hold her arms out in a circle with her hands holding each other almost like a basket. JA would run in a circle in front of their great-grandmother, and when she was done repeating the lyrics, she would put her arms down to try and capture JA while they were within her basket-like arm positioning. If she caught them, she would tickle them. If she did not catch them, JA would win the game.

Analysis:

Hearing about JA’s experience with this folk song and its accompanying game allowed me to consider how it might connect with the role Hispanic/Latina (great) grandmothers play when it comes to sharing cultural traditions and information to younger generations. By singing this song, she is providing entertainment for young JA while simultaneously fulfilling the responsibility of transmitting their shared Mexican culture. In pairing this song with a game, JA’s great grandmother, is perhaps teaching JA that they can partake and enjoy a culture that might feel distant from them as a Mexican American growing up in a suburban area. The performance of this folk song in this context captures the the desire to connect singer and listener to one another all while sharing an aspect of Mexican culture.

Car Rituals dealing with Hazard Avoidance – Automobile Superstitions

Nationality: Persian-American
Age: 52
Occupation: Business Development, Pharmaceutical
Residence: San Ramon, CA
Performance Date: April 28, 2021
Primary Language: English

Description of Informant

PV (52) is a pharmacist and businesswoman from St. Louis, Missouri. Raised in a Persian household, PV spent some of her early childhood between the US and Iran, prior to the revolution. For the last two decades, PV has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area.

— 

Context of Interview

The informant, PV, sits in her kitchen browsing Twitter, while her daughter, LK, snacks on french fries. The collector, BK, is PV’s son, and lives with her and LK.

Interview

BK: So tell me about these car games/superstitions.

PV: I think… my memory is… so there’s all these things, when I was a teenager, right? And we would be driving with friends, you started to pick up some of these, kind of, rituals that people had in their own— because, like, when you’re friends and you’re not driving in a car you never really, like, pick these things up. So it was more like when I turned 16 and we were driving, all of a sudden I noticed— we’d be driving and it would be a Friday night— and all of a sudden I remember a car went by and one of the headlights was out, and all of a sudden [my friend] went, “Perdiddle!” And I’m like, “What?” and she’s like, “Oh, don’t you guys do that?” and I’m like, “Don’t I do what?” *laughing* And we were like, so we were like, “Oh okay cool!” So whenever another car would go by that had a headlight out, then somebody would yell “Perdiddle!” So that became kind of a thing, right?

PV: And then there was this thing about if you go over a bridge… now that’s the part where I can’t remember. I think some people would tap the ceiling when you go over the bridge. I don’t know what that was about. But other people would lift their feet up [in the car] when they’d go over a bridge. Silly games, I guess.

BK: And LK you said you had something about…

LK: We’d just hold our breath. When we’d go through a tunnel. And see who could hold their breath through the whole thing. I don’t know really when it started but it’s— I feel like a lot of people know about it. Like whenever I’m with friends or whatever I’m always like, “Okay, ready? 1-2-3!” And we all hold our breath and like, everybody just does it and knows that it’s a thing, but we don’t, like, know how we all found out about it. Like, I felt that probably one time it happened and we all did it— like nobody was shocked when we all did it. It was like nobody was surprised.

PV: Oh, when I was with [my ex], they always honked when they went in the tunnel. 

BK: Honked… long? Or, was it just like a “beep!”

PV: Well, I will tell you. The idea was you were only supposed to honk when you went in the tunnel. Just a tap, I thought that’s all it was. But one time I got really mad because, we were in… believe it or not, of all things we were in, you know, like Monte Carlo? We’d gone from south of France, Monte Carlo, south of Italy, you know, like that area. And we were going through a tunnel. The whatchamacallit had been going on… the Tour de France. And we were in a tunnel and he’s going honk! honk! honk! honk! for the entire long tunnel. And his daughter starts crying cuz her ears are hurting and he doesn’t stop. He’s like “You’re supposed to honk in tunnels.” So like, his desire to do the honking in tunnel… was stronger. That ritual was stronger than his daughter crying.

Collector’s Reflection

Looking over each of these car games/activities, one may immediately suspect they are methods to keep yourself occupied on a long drive, especially pre-smartphone. However, upon inspection, a pattern becomes clear: hazard avoidance. Each of these games is performed in the presence of a potential hazard, and seems to be a superstitious ritual to protect oneself/the occupants of the vehicle.

Take the bridge and tunnel examples. Both present the threat of imminent collapse. Perhaps tapping the roof represents lifting the car over the bridge. If there’s water under the bridge, you may lift your feet to keep them from “getting wet”; otherwise, raising your feet may help you float above the bridge, or avoid adding excess weight so the structure stays standing. Holding one’s breath in a tunnel seems to be an act of prayer, akin to holding your breath in a high-stakes situation. Again, superstitious and intangible, but for good reason.

These car games can have more practical origins/applications too. Perdiddle (or padiddle as it’s sometimes known) can keep the driver and passenger aware of reckless drivers on the road. If a car approaches with one headlight, calling perdiddle ensures that your driver is aware of the potential risk. Such a threat posed by these single-headlight cars is their similar appearance to motorcycles in the dark. If the driver isn’t paying attention, they might get too close, not realizing the oncoming vehicle is much larger/wider than it seems.

Similarly, honking as you drive through a tunnel signals to oncoming traffic, much in the spirit of old trains. The auditory cue will allow any pedestrians or oncoming cars not yet in the vehicle’s line of sight to clear out, keeping everyone safe.