Category Archives: Gestures

Left is Law

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.

 

 

“Left is law is a phrase you say when smoking. If you are sitting in a group of people smoking, hookah or whatever, you have to pass to the left always, counterclockwise, never to the right. Left is law. If you ever try to pass to the right everybody freaks out and reprimands you for it. It’s like a ritual type thing. If you ever pass to the right then it’s all fucked. The whole time is ruined, and it’s all shit. You always pass to the left.”

 

 

Response: This is a sort of ritual/magic folklore that revolves around smoking. I’ve never come across the folklore before, but my friend Anthony was adamant about it’s importance and relevance. He was shocked that I had not heard of it before. Perhaps it just exists in order to create a “go to” or “status quo” for a situation that is often variable. There also seems to be an expectation of having a good time tied to following the ritual, and a poor time associated with breaking it.

Hebrew Death Hands

Nationality: Israeli
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Israel
Performance Date: April 29, 2015
Primary Language: Hebrew
Language: English

Yon is a student at USC who I am close friends with. He is originally from Israel, and this is his first year in America. He speaks with a thick Israeli accent, and jumped at the opportunity to share his culture’s folklore with me.

 

Performance: “Ok so we have this thing where you cross your hands like this.” Yon then places his hands out, palms towards himself, and overlaps his lightly spread fingers at a diagonal angle. “It spells death in hebrew. Ma-vet. Yeah. The lines in your hands SPELL mavet, which means death.”

And you do it why? because it’s creepy? Because it’s cool?

“Yeah, we just do it.”

 

Response: This was a very interesting piece of folklore. When you hold your hands at a certain angle, the creases and lines on your palms spell out the Hebrew word for death. Yon didn’t seem to really understand why I was asking why they did it, he said that they simply do. I think this is an example of a cool piece of identity which those who speak hebrew have with the human body. If I looked down at my hands from a certain angle and saw the english word “death” I would think it was pretty cool too.

Cross Yourself

Nationality: Mexican
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Mexico
Performance Date: April 30, 2015
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: English

Bernie is a very close friend of mine from Mexico. Bernie left Mexico for the first time to study at USC. He loves to talk about his culture, and speaks with a thick Mexican accent.

 

 

 

Performance: “Another thing that is pretty big for Mexico and that my parents always taught me, related to Catholicism is that every time that you um pass by a church either by car or walking if you don’t do…umm…the cross? (he crosses himself to see if I understand) The cross. Then you’re going to have bad luck. My Mom would always tell me that you gotta do the cross every time you pass a church, if not it would be against your faith and bad luck and everything.”

 

 

Response: Crossing one’s self is common practice for Catholics, but i find it interesting that beyond simply being a “bad christian” that Bernie was taught it was actually bad luck. It is interesting when religious practices are sort of hybridized with “luck” which is generally a folk belief tied to folk traditions, rituals, and gestures.

The Beaver Call

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: student
Residence: Arizona
Performance Date: April 29, 2015
Primary Language: English

In high school on the baseball team, we had this pregame ritual … and we did this thing and it changes from year to year, um, um, on what it’s called. But, usually it’s called the Beaver Call.

We get in a circle behind the dugout and we do this… well my senior year, we tried to change it to the rat call for this guy, “Rat”, and uh.. there are talks of my brother being in the middle next year and they’d call it the Budde Call (pronounced like booty call).

But basically you just jump up and down like idiots and do this chant.

It goes:

Beaver 1, Beaver All

Let’s all do the Beaver Call

(makes noise with mouth)

Beaver 2, Beaver 3

Let’s all climb the Beaver Tree

(mimes climbing a tree)

Beaver 4, Beaver 5

Let’s all do the Beaver Jive

(dances)

Beaver  6, Beaver 7

Let’s all go to Beaver Heaven

(points up, dances more)

Beaver 8, Beaver 9

Stop! It’s  BEAVER TIME!

(freaks out, dances/jumps crazily)

Was the Beaver your school mascot?

No.

Why did you do this?

Tradition. It was just like every year we did it- it’s a pregame warmup. And it hypes you up for the game.

How long has it been a part of your team?

No idea… well beyond my knowledge.

How do you learn it?

Just from older guys on the team before it. Just Varsity does it. So, sort of yeah, a rite of passage.

 

Context: 

I asked my friend to tell me if he had any baseball rituals because I knew he played in high school. This was the only one he had, but he let me record him doing it while he got ready for a formal event, which I thought was very funny. It was supposed to be a one on one collection, but his roommate, a separate informant, was in the room and interjected that he had also done the Beaver Call except at his camp.

Thoughts:

Sports rituals, especially ones that are only for the Varsity team or older players, also seem to be rites of passage. I wouldn’t be surprised if kids on the JV and freshman teams also know the Beaver Call but know not to do it until they are in that inner group and have the honor to dance about.

Also, it was interesting how perfectly he remembered it and told it without embarrassment.

 

 

 

The Great Depression and Brushing Teeth

Nationality: American
Age: 86
Residence: Rancho Palos Verdes, California
Primary Language: English

Brushing Your Teeth During the Great Depression in Rural Tennessee:

ME: What did you do to brush your teeth during the Great Depression in Tennessee?

M.H.: Yeah, well I was a little bit older, and I was twelve years old. When I got my first store-bought toothbrush. Before that, we would always make them ourselves, by getting a branch from a black gum maple tree, and we would just peel the skin from the bark, it was young bark, and we would take an end of it and start brushing our teeth. Basically we would use salt and soda together, and would rinse our mouths out with water, because we didn’t have toothpaste either.

ME: And, how long did you brush your teeth like this?

M.H.: Up until I was twelve years old, when I got my first store-bought toothbrush. Then I started using toothbrushes from the store, then.

ME: What year could you remember it being?

M.H.: Uh, let’s see. It was 1939, or ’40, because I was born in ’27. Twelve years beyond that.

 

M.H. describes how she, and her family brushed their teeth during the years of the Great Depression, up until she had first bought, and subsequently stuck with commercially available toothbrushes and toothpaste. She and her family needed to utilize natural resources, in order to accomplish what many people take for granted as a routine practice today.