In the barnyard

Information Info

Age: 20

Date_of_performance: 02/13/2025

Informant Name: EK

Language: English 

Nationality: American 

Occupation: Student 

Primary Language: English

Residence: Los Angeles, CA  

Text:

“For as long as I can remember, my family loved to play card games, especially euchre. Euchre is essentially a trick-taking game with two teams of two, with a little skill and lots of luck of the draw. In euchre, you play to ten, and whenever any team got to nine, one team member would stick their hands out, interlocking their hands together except for their thumbs which would stick down in as “udders”. Then, the other team member would spray milk on the opposing team, paired with lots of jeering and taunting as they would flaunt how they were “in the barnyard!”. That phrase has only come from my family from what I can tell, but whenever I’m close to succeeding at something, I often say I’m in the barnyard because of that.”

Analysis:

Out of all of the proverbs I’ve got from the interviews, this is the first one that doesn’t have the intention of wisdom or a hidden passage that is being passed down from different generations. This one was created about of a fun game night with his family. It is a proverb that came from a family memory and E created into a message for himself and turning it into a feeling succeeding because he would say that phrase when he won the game. I love hearing stories about a family saying that becomes ingrained into people and soon becomes of great importance to them. if you were to hear someone yell “In the barnyard” after finishing up a hard assignment or getting a dream job, it would be fair for your first reaction would be to be weirded out because that would be the last thing you expected to hear. But to them, it is meaningful for them. That is what proverbs should be at the end of the day, they don’t have to make sense to others as long as you understand the meaning and carry it with you giving you hope or reminding you have good memories.