Category Archives: Childhood

Goosey Night (AKA Mischief Night)

Text:

M: “So on Goosey Night, we’d all sneak out and we’d bring ivory soap. It was always ivory soap. And you’d go around and you’d be putting soap all over people’s car windows so they can’t drive. And we’d throw eggs at people’s houses and stuff. People called it mischief, we called it goosey night”

Context:

M grew up in New Jersey. Every Halloween Eve, the kids in his town partook in “Goosey Night.” A night full of pranks, mischief, and mayhem.

Analysis:

The phrase “Goosey Night” is a form of esoteric form of folk speech. Most people call Halloween Eve Mischief Night, but my father and the kids he knew called it Goosey Night. By have a different, unique name for the night, the kids were able to communicate with each other in ways outsiders wouldn’t understand. The pranks and mischief of Goosey Night are rituals – repeated, patterned actions. It was a tradition for kids to break the rules once a year, on Goosey Night. In a way, the kids existed in a space of liminality because they weren’t ignorant babies or knowledgeable adults. If an adult partook in Goosey Night, they would most likely be arrested, but kids could because they existed in the in-between space.

“Dale Boys”

Text:

D: “[at school] We were the Dale boys.”

C: “Because you were bussed in?”

D: “We were bussed in so we didn’t have our own high school so we were bussed in so we were from Riverdale so they call us the Dale boys, the people from the other side of the tracks. People from the other side the tracks were considered poor. And so we were from the other side of track because we weren’t canola, smoke rise, the rich kids.”

Context:

My dad grew up in a poorer town in New Jersey called Riverdale. The town/district didn’t have their own high school, so the kids in Riverdale were bussed into the nearest town’s high school. That town was much wealthier than Riverdale, and classism and elitism were always present between the two groups. My dad and the other Italian kids from Riverdale were called the “Dale Boys” to mock and patronize them for being different and less wealthier.

Analysis:

The name “Dale Boys” is simultaneously both an esoteric and exoteric. It was esoteric in the way that it connected all the kids from the wealthier town and made them “better” than the kids from Riverdale. It communicated a sense of superiority within the group. “Dale Boys” is also exoteric in the sense that it was a way for the bullies to communicate their distaste to the “outsiders” – the kids bussed in.

High School Coming-of-Age Rite

Text:

H: “Each class had its color, like I was the yellow class. So there was like a spirit day where you all wore your colors and at the end of the day, the seniors would jump in [a big fountain on the school’s campus] first and with all their kilts on – like our uniform kilts – and no one else was allowed to wear their kilt. And like they were allowed to go in the water like class by class you went in. So like senior, junior, sophomore, freshman, but like only the seniors could wear their kilt. And that was like a fun thing to jump in the pool ’cause like you weren’t really, the pool wasn’t used. It wasn’t like used for swim practice; it was only used this day. Yeah, it was like a fountain type thing. So yeah, if you were senior, you could wear your kilt. And I remember one year, like a freshman wore her kilt and she was like heavily trash talked, ’cause you’re not supposed to do that. It’s like a respect thing.“

Context:

H went to an all-girls high school in Philadelphia. Every grade level was assigned a color, and on spirit day they would wear their colors and jump into the school’s fountain in grade level order. However, only seniors were allowed to jump into the fountain wearing their kilt – a special piece of the school uniform.

Analysis:

High school seniors exist in a space of liminality: they are in-between youth and adulthood. Because they exist in the doorway between identities, many rites of passages are created to celebrate and commemorate the time. “Communitas” is created because of the special bond seniors form together as they transpire the liminality between youth and adulthood. This establishes sacredness of rites of passage. They are something to be earned that one cannot attain prior to their own existence in liminality. That is why students at H’s school would become very upset if a non-senior wore their kilt while jumping into the fountain – the ritual is being broken and its sacredness is being tarnished.

Thunder Explained to a Child

Text:

“The angels are bowling”

Context:

“The angels are bowling,” my mom use to tell me when I was a child. I was so afraid of thunderstorms, so my mom told me that thunder was just the angels in Heaven bowling. I stopped being afraid of thunder then and would just complain that the angels always had to go bowling when I was trying to fall asleep.

Analysis:

In order to help me overcome my fear of thunderstorms, my mother constructed a legend – a story set in the real world and told as if it was true. Now, I asked her if she came up with the legend on her own, and she tells me she’s not sure. She may have heard it from somewhere else or come up with it on the spot. My family and I are Christians, so my mother used emic, or insider’s, language when discussing that thunderstorms are just angels bowling to esoterically communicate to me that I had nothing to fear.

The Discipline Devil

Age: 37

1. Informant name- A. M.
2. Date of Performance- April 24, 2026
3. Age- 37
4. Ethnicity- Dominican and Puerto Rican
5. Career/Occupation- Caregiver
6. Hometown- New York City
7. Informant’s language- English

Story –

Growing up with a Dominican mother they have this thing that if you disrespect our parents the devil comes out . So when I was younger I was very slick out of the mouth. I’ve always been slick at the mouth so one night my mom, your grandmother, was telling me to go to sleep but I was just being spiteful and doing stupid shit. So that whole day, that whole night, I placed a figurine that your grandma used to have on a table in the middle. It was like a flower glass and I placed it on the floor.Your aunt was chasing me when I was terrorizing her and she stepped on it. So I got my ass whopped then I was sent to bed. Mommy kept telling me to go to sleep but I didn’t want to go to sleep. So I pretended I was sleeping and then they turned off all the lights. When I looked to the side all I saw was a shadow. It looked like a demon dancing, really tall, about like 8 feet tall, long nails, a long tail, just like dancing. I just saw the shadow so I closed my eyes and covered myself from head to top and I went to sleep. After that I ain’t seen nothing else.

Context- 

My mother was telling me a story about her childhood where she was scared of the devil because of stories she was told by her immigrant mother.

Their thoughts-

At that moment she really believed it and was really scared. Now she doesn’t know if it was real or not and just regards it as a moment in her childhood. The moment itself was real for her but they explain the action behind it is up in the air.

My thoughts-

I think that because she’s already had this idea in her head that the devil was gonna come out if she had it tricked her brain into seeing something that wasn’t there. At night I know that something’s my Brian tricks me into seeing things that aren’t there and I think that the same thing may have happened to my mom.