Category Archives: Kinesthetic

Body movements

Sweeping Dirt in Their Grave

A is 54 years old. She was born in Ft. Waldon, Florida and moved to Sylvania, Georgia at 2 years old. She’d been there all her life until last year (2021). A has a thick Southern accent that’s very pleasant to listen to. She told me about why I should be careful not to sweep over anyone’s feet while sweeping a floor.

“You don’t sweep over anyone’s feet while sweeping a floor because that means you’re sweeping dirt in their grave and that means that you’re wishing them dead, like a curse.”

Another version of this superstition says that sweeping under someone’s feet means they will never get married. For more on Southern broom related folklore, see https://www.weirdsouth.com/post/sweeping-superstitions

Teasing hand gesture – Arabic Children’s Folk Gesture

Nationality: Palestinian
Age: 75
Occupation: Retired
Residence: Long Beach
Performance Date: 5/2/2021
Primary Language: Arabic
Language: English, French

Context:

She learned the hand motion in Egypt when she was around 5. You would do this gesture to another person when you want to tease them. Originally, when saying it, you would say “To’ ou moot” (“Explode and die”).

Gesture:

For the sake of my informant’s anonymity, I performed the gesture in the video.

Thoughts:

When I first saw the gesture, I thought it was playing on the English saying “Rubbing it in,” but then my informant translated the Arabic that accompanies the gesture. I found it hilarious that the speech and gesture have little to do with one another, but it could fall into the nonsense and taunting categories of children’s folklore (discussed by Jay Mechling in Chapter 5 of Elliot Oring’s Folk Groups and Folklore Genres: An Introduction).*

*Jay Mechling. “Children’s Folklore.” Folk Groups and Folklore Genres: An Introduction, edited by E. Oring, 91-120. Logan: Utah State University Press, 1986.

Children’s Clapping Game: Lemonade, Crunchy Ice

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Scottsdale, AZ
Performance Date: February 11, 2021
Primary Language: English

Main Piece: 

“Lemonade 

Crunchy ice 

beat it once beat it twice 

turn around touch the ground 

kick your boyfriend out of town 

Freeze 

American cheese 

I think I’m gonna sneeze 

achoo woohoo”

Background:

The informant used to perform this song as part of clapping game in pre-school and elementary school in Arizona. She described it as an activity kids would do while lining up, such as when they were leaving the playground. She interpreted it as a distraction and time-passer, as well as something you got the joy of passing on/teaching. This was a regular activity for her and her classmates that those in her circle all knew. This was one of a few clapping games, rather than the only one they played.

Thoughts:

This recitation seems similar to other childhood clapping games such as “patty-cake”, but with different lyrics and rhythm. This game also seems more physically active and disruptive to the line than other similar games I’ve seen, with my informant demonstrating exaggerated hand movements not restricted to clapping. Presumably, this would be counter-productive to an organized line. This seems to be an example of children’s folklore responding in a disorderly way to the order imposed by adults, which is a concept explored by Jay Mechling. Children have little power, he says, and so one of the ways they squeeze some power into their grasp is through disorder. This piece of folklore seems to manifest that principle with physical disruption and nonsensical lyrics.

Children’s Clapping Game: Candy on a Stick

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Scottsdale, AZ
Performance Date: February 11, 2021
Primary Language: English

Main Piece: 

“Candy on a stick that makes me sick, 

It makes my tummy go two-forty-six, 

Not because you’re dirty, not because you’re clean, 

Not because you kissed a boy behind a magazine. 

Hey boys do you wanna fight 

I see a guy with his pants on tight 

He can wibble he can wobble he can even do the splits, 

But I bet ya ten bucks that he can’t do this. 

Close your eyes and count to ten, and if you mess up start over again”

Background:

The informant used to perform this song as part of clapping game in pre-school and elementary school in Arizona. She described it as an activity kids would do while lining up, such as when they were leaving the playground. She interpreted it as a distraction and time-passer, as well as something you got the joy of passing on/teaching. This was a regular activity for her and her classmates that those in her circle all knew. This was one of a few clapping games, rather than the only one they played.

Thoughts:

This recitation seems similar to other childhood clapping games such as “patty-cake”, but with different lyrics and rhythm. This clapping game also seems more based in gender than the clapping games I’m familiar with, which, though normally performed by young girls, did not stake boys so firmly as another entity. This may be an example of defiant/experimental lyrics in schoolchildren with its fighting, kissing, and tight pants. Jay Mechling explains that children tend to experiment with “inappropriate” lyrics as a way to rebel against the dominant adult figures and explore adult themes that they’re marginally aware of safely. This activity seems to be a definitively gendered form of adolescent expression. The purpose would be to explore kissing, fighting, and tight pants in a low-stakes context. For another version of this game, see Tucker, Elizabeth. “Children’s Folklore: A Handbook.” United States: ABC-CLIO, 2008. 18.

Children’s Game: Spanking Machine Tag

Nationality: American
Age: 52
Occupation: Medical Writer
Residence: Staunton, VA
Performance Date: April 18, 2021
Primary Language: English

Main Piece: 

Informant: “Here’s a neighborhood game that I just remembered we used to play. It was very popular in our neighborhood. And I don’t know where it was picked up. You know, I was one of five kids, so we played a lot of games together and so we played a lot of games together, and the neighborhood would play a lot of games together, and we played a lot of tag. So we’d play some pretty typical tags like freeze tag, or just tag, or… I can’t remember the other names.”

Collector: “Like zombie tag. Or the version of it, yeah.”

Informant: “Zombie tag, yeah. So, one that we played pretty frequently- maybe it was pretty common, I’ve never seen anyone else do it -it was spanking machine tag. So, when someone gets frozen by tag, if they can stand with their legs apart like a teepee or like an A-frame and someone else can crawl through their legs before the person who’s it catches them, the person gets free.”

Collector: “Oh, yeah. I’ve played that.”

Informant: “Okay, so maybe it’s—”

Collector: “The word spanking in the title threw me off.”

Informant: “Maybe… Oh, I think we would spank them as they went through, too.”

Background:

This is a game that, as above, my informant would play as a child in Virginia as one of a number of tag variants. From the tone of voice, it was clear that she enjoyed the game. She called it as a neighborhood game, rather than a school game or kid’s game. Playing this game, she said, was localized to a smaller group than children or Virginian children. She had the opinion that this was a weird thing her neighborhood specifically did.

Thoughts:

Having played a version of this myself when I was a child in Utah, I can attest that this game is widely proliferated. The idea behind crawling through the legs rather than simply touching the frozen body is to provide a further challenge for everyone that’s not “it.” Games where there is an “it” figure are characterized by a balance of power. Power is temporarily granted to the “it” figure and it is the title that transfers from child to child, allowing them to try their hand at power. This modification allows more power for the “it” figure in freeze tag, where it’s normally very easy for the larger group to win and the “it” figure doesn’t change as frequently. This specific version is also a good example of children’s counter-authoritative tendency to introduce things like spanking that they’re not supposed to do into their games in order to push the game outside the boundary of approved play.