Informant (“A”) is a 19 year old, female from Rancho Santa Fe, California, and attends The University of Southern California. She is a Human Biology major.  She is of European descent and her family includes her mother, father, and older brother who attends college in Texas.  Informant has studied ballet for 17 years, including work in a professional company.

A: “So in my high school we have a senior rec room.  Honestly the place is absolutely disgusting and teachers avoid it like the plague.  That kinda means anything goes in there.  There’s stories about people having sex on the couches…and other stuff too.  There’s a story about this guy in the rec room, and honestly he wasn’t the smartest guy, but so there’s like this pool table in there, and he really overestimated how good he was at pool.

Anyway he made a bet and lost and the punishment was he had to shave his head bald, except for his eyebrow length bangs.  It was the stupidest looking thing I ever saw.  He kept it for a few days, but like he mostly wore a hat anyway, and then finally shaved it clean.  He was supposed to keep it for a week I guess.  And it took forever for his hair to grow back out too.

He didn’t learn though because the same guy made another pool bet, and of course lost again.  So like in the rec room there’s this big vacuum and it’s really powerful and it’s got a big hose on it.  When he lost he had to stick his dick inside the vacuum with it on.  I guess he didn’t know this, but another guy had coated the inside of the vacuum with icy hot.  I guess he didn’t find out about the icy hot until like 20 minutes later when he was sitting in class too.  I think he had to go home for the rest of the day.  He didn’t make anymore bets either”.

Analysis: The rec room described in this piece of Folklore appears to be a ‘no adults allowed’ sort of location, and thus legends of taboo teen activities are associated with the area. Sort of acting as an oasis where students could release any sort of tabooistic discourse they would normally hide from the administration. Legends of students having sex in the recreation room, as well as the student sticking his penis in a vacuum show these sorts of themes surrounding the room.

The student being punished for his hubris in betting could either act as a sort of morality tale, to be careful with overconfidence or it may act as a sort of representation of the themes represented by the recreation room. ‘A’ did confirm that the students cutting his bangs was recorded on video, and that that did in fact occur. She was more unsure of the ‘dick in the vacuum’ aspect.