It’s easier to shear a sheep than raise a lamb to sheep-hood

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 2/20/23
Primary Language: English

Text: It’s easier to shear a sheep than raise a lamb to sheep-hood

Minor Genre: Proverb

Context: AH is a junior at USC. He is from Santa Monica, California, and is well-known for his creativity: he has his own religion for which he has created an entire alphabet. He told me this new proverb that he had come up with himself while writing an essay. He told me, “It’s about writing essays, but it could be about editing a film, it could be about a lot of things that you’re creating…” He told me that the process of creation is much easier if you begin by creating a lot, because after that it’s just about “shear[ing] it off and collect[ing] the wool and mak[ing] something out of it.’” He recounted his new saying to a friend who now uses it often. This friend then told it to her screenwriting professor who has apparently since used it while teaching his students.  

Analysis: AH did not clearly delineate which type of speech his saying was, but I assert that this is a proverb. It gives advice, it is metaphorical and short, and though AH is young, his soul is old and wise. While there is so much to be learned from old proverbs whose origins are now indefinite, it is also important to understand how pieces of folklore are created in the first place. For many proverbs, one might assume that the literal situation which creates metaphorical meaning was probably experienced by the person who first spoke the proverb. However, I know that AH did not grow up shearing sheep nor raising lambs, and thus it makes me consider how self-reflexive folk speech can be. He is someone who values old sayings and has a wealth of them memorized, and so it is more the inspiration of other proverbs rather than lived experience that seems to have brought him to create his own. It is wonderful to see how this proverb has already begun to spread throughout the USC community, and it will be interesting to see if it catches on elsewhere.

The Earth is round

Nationality: USA
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: CA, USA
Performance Date: 2/23/23
Primary Language: English

NM told me a phrase his mother would say when someone takes a wrong turn in the car. He described his mother a “casual, very laid back, person.”

I forget the actual phrase, but basically it’s like “The Earth is round, we’ll get there eventually”

-NM

This saying could be a response to contemporary American culture. In the United States, there much respect given towards working people. Leisure and relaxation are often viewed as laziness, which can lead to people becoming upset when unnecessary time is taken to complete a task. In contrast to this, NM’s mother takes a more laid-back approach, choosing to accept the extra time taken in stride and stay content with the way things happen.

Joota Chupai – Shoe Stealing

Nationality: USA
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: California, USA
Performance Date: 2/21/23
Primary Language: English

ZN describes a prank/game that is commonly played at weddings in their culture. They are a second generation immigrant from Pakistan who lives in the Bay Area. Their family is Muslim.

ZN.) So, when a couple gets married – a bride and groom – the bride’s family, usually like the younger siblings or cousins of the bride, will steal the groom’s shoes and then they’ll go hide them somewhere and the groom’s family has to try and get the shoes, but they never do. And then the groom has to buy the shoes back from the bride’s family because they’re like, ‘oh you’re taking away or our sister or cousin,’ or whatever. It’s like, ‘we’re taking your shoes’ and then the groom is like, ‘I’ll pay you a lot of money for the shoes.’ So, then It’s like a huge, like, bargaining thing and the groom will be like, ‘Oh how about like $200’ and then the bride’s family will go like, ‘No we want $1000.’ The groom will be like, ‘No, but I’m broke. I won’t have any money to pay for my new wife’s food,’ and they’re like, ‘no give us more money.’ Anyway, so then they usually settle on, like, $500 or something, and then with our family, the entire family the of the bride will go to like Ihop after the wedding and we’ll spend it all on Ihop, like, pancakes and hot chocolate

Me.) Where do you usually see this? Is it your family specifically or have you seen any version of this at other weddings for the shoe stealing?

ZN.) I don’t know if it’s a South Asian, or maybe just Muslim Pakistani, thing but the shoe stealing is like a common thing.

This seems to be a practice of the game Joota Chupai, literally translating to ‘Shoe Hiding’. This wedding tradition is most often observed by Desi groups (south Asians) in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and other surrounding countries. In this game the bride’s family will steal the groom’s shoes, which in Hindu culture, they must have to leave or enter the wedding venue. The groom’s family will try to find the shoes to get them back to the groom, usually to no avail, and then the bride’s family will demand money to return the shoes to the groom. This tradition allows the two families to have some fun during long wedding ceremonies and brings them closer together through competition. Even though the tradition seems to stem from Hinduism, it seems that Muslims from the surrounding regions picked up the tradition as well, showing cultural mixing within the area despite religious tensions. JK, another South Asian individual hailing from Gujarat, India had this to say about the game:

JK.) It’s played all over India. Everyone does it at weddings, so it’s not a Hindu or Muslim thing, it’s everyone.

Kangaroo Court

Nationality: USA
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: California,CA
Performance Date: 2/23/23
Primary Language: English

NM was a Boy Scout throughout their childhood, and this game came from their trips.

NM.) On our Catalina hike, because it was a 3-day weekend, we would do this game called kangaroo court where you would accuse other scouts of, like, some ridiculous thing like, “This dude is a capybara in disguise and is secretly plotting to take over the world!” Then, if you were accused, you’d have to get someone to be your lawyer and they would have to defend you. They would bring up different things you did during the day. People would set this up during the hike and make people say things that they would bring up during kangaroo court.

The boy scouts have many games, pranks, and traditions, and this seems to be one of them. This sits somewhere between a prank and a game because people would set up verbal traps that they would later spring on their defendant. By having a ‘lawyer’ defend the defendant, this game becomes community fun instead of direct opposition because that ‘lawyer’ would have to remember their experiences with the ‘defendant’

Scuba Diver Riddle

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: College student
Residence: USC
Performance Date: 2/14/2023
Primary Language: English

D is 19 years old, she’s a college student. She moved to California for high school, and has a large history with camping and hiking. She shared this trail game riddle she learned at summer camp in North Carolina when she was 11 or 12, though she’s also heard it multiple times while hiking. 

“You could call them detective riddles, but they’re all in the same genre of: someone presents a scenario and then the one who’s trying to figure it out is asking questions about the scenario until they get more and more details and they figure out the answer to the scenario. This one is known as the scuba diver riddle. The scenario is “a man is found in the middle of a burned down forest head to toe in scuba gear. There’s no trace of anyone else around him, no trace of how he got there, what happened?” From there people ask questions like “Is he wet? Yes or no. Is he alive?” Sometimes it takes 20 minutes, I’ve seen up to three days, it’s a great thing to play when you’re in the backcountry and really bored. The eventual answer is that the man is someone who was scuba diving, there was a forest fire miles and miles away from sea, and helicopter crews trying to stop the wild fire were collecting water in huge nets to carry over to the forest from the ocean. They picked up this scuba diver, dropped him on the forest fire, he died on impact.” 

This was a new brand of riddle that I hadn’t heard because it seems to be specific to those who go hiking or are out in nature for a long time. It seems like an excellent way to pass a lot of time. It’s really interesting how groups that spend a lot of time doing something repetitive like walking up a trail or camping will get creative to engage their minds over that long period of time. I wonder how far back games like these go. I imagine games like this have existed for a long time, because before cars people often had to walk very far to get to their destination if they were traveling somewhere new, like soldiers marching or people going on the Oregon Trial. I imagine humans have been creating these games for a long time, and they’ve morphed to suit modern audiences, as this riddle is terminus post quem helicopters and scuba gear existing. The informant also said that this riddle was used by adults to frustrate and keep kids busy, because kids like to ask a lot of questions. It seems like a good way to quench kid’s curiosity, because kids are endlessly curious.