Trojan Check Horoscopes

Informant Information — KL

  • Nationality: American
  • Age: 19
  • Occupation: Student
  • Residence: Los Angeles, California
  • Date of Performance/Collection: April 10, 2022
  • Primary Language: English

The informant is a USC student that has lived on-campus and completed daily Trojan Checks every day. Over the course of the school year, we’ve decided that the pink and yellow Trojan Checks have the most significant meanings. I collected this information in-person, in my apartment near USC.

Interviewer: 

Can you explain our Trojan Check color horoscope system? 

Informant: 

Basically, we were talking about the different Trojan Check colors and how we couldn’t tell if there was a pattern or if the color was just randomized every day. As we kept talking about it, we agreed that pink was the best color and yellow was the worst. Then, we also realized that we both tend to have good days when our Trojan Checks are pink and bad days when they’re yellow. 

Now, I know that if it’s pink, I’ll have a lucky day, but I should be careful if it’s yellow. 

Interviewer: 

Do you have any recent examples? 

Informant: 

Yesterday was a pink day, and I took a quiz that was way easier than I thought it would be. But on the last yellow day, I stepped in gum AND spilled water all over my desk… cursed, to be sure. 

Analysis:

I have also noticed that pink Trojan Checks are lucky while yellow Trojan Checks are distinctly unlucky. Interestingly, this was brought up in a class discussion where several of my classmates had also acknowledged this phenomenon. I’m not sure if pink Trojan Checks just put people in a more positive mood while most people agree that the yellow Trojan Check is a pretty unfortunate color and feel discouraged by it, but the belief has definitely gained traction this year.

Snipe Hunting

Informant Information — KL

  • Nationality: American
  • Age: 19
  • Occupation: Student
  • Residence: Los Angeles, California
  • Date of Performance/Collection: April 10, 2022
  • Primary Language: English

The informant shared this story with me in an in-person interview. She participated in a “snipe hunt” during a visit to her grandparents’ house when she was about ten years old.

Interviewer: 

How did you come to participate in the “snipe hunt”?

Informant: 

When I was probably ten years old, my parents sent my brothers and I to spend a few weeks with my grandparents in Arizona. We were super excited to see the desert because my mom told us that there would be lots of cool animals there. 

About halfway through the trip, my grandparents were probably starting to get kind of tired of us, so they told us that we were going to spend a day snipe hunting. They drove us about 20 minutes away from their house and let us run around for like three hours… they didn’t even tell us that the snipes weren’t real! We found out after we got home and told our parents that we couldn’t find any. 

Interviewer: 

Had you heard of snipes before? What did your grandparents tell you to look for?

Informant: 

We hadn’t ever heard of snipes before, I thought they were native to the desert. My grandparents said we were looking for little brown birds that couldn’t fly and had really long beaks. They said that we would have to creep up on them and jump on top of them to catch them. 

Interviewer: 

How did you and your brothers react to learning that they weren’t real?

Informant: 

My brothers didn’t really care. I think they would’ve been happy to catch any animal at all. I was a little disappointed because I really wanted to catch a snipe and hold it, since they were supposed to be soft like birds. Now I think it’s really funny. 

Analysis:

The snipe hunt was a joke played on my informant by her grandparents, but it could also be considered a rite of passage (transitioning from being in the group that doesn’t know what snipes are to being in the group that’s in on the joke). I hadn’t heard of snipe hunting, but I have been sent on similar fool’s errands. As a child, my father once let me run around Home Depot looking for a “left-handed screwdriver” while he was shopping.

High School Tennis Traditions

Informant Information — SD

  • Nationality: American
  • Age: 16
  • Occupation: Student
  • Residence: San Pedro, California
  • Date of Performance/Collection: April 3, 2022
  • Primary Language: English

The informant is currently a junior in high school. In an in-person interview, I asked her about any school traditions that she had participated in before.

Interviewer: 

Does your high school have any traditions that you’ve participated in before?

Informant: 

Yeah, I’ve been on the tennis team every year of high school so I’ve done stuff for their traditions. One is that we all wear one yellow sock and one black sock for our important games. A couple girls refuse to even wash the socks that she wears, but I think that’s gross so I don’t do that part. 

Interviewer: 

Is there any significance to the colors and which color goes on which foot?

Informant: 

It doesn’t matter which color goes on which foot. We do yellow and black because our school colors are gold and black. My school doesn’t include socks with our uniforms so we just do yellow because it’s easier to find than gold. 

Interviewer: 

Do you know how long the tennis team has been doing this?

Informant: 

No, but it must have been started a really long time ago because our uniforms aren’t even black and gold anymore. They changed the colors to white and yellow a couple years before I joined the team. 

Analysis:

Wearing coordinated mismatching socks is a fun way to demonstrate membership in this high school folk group– the tennis team. This ritual is supposed to bring good luck to the team, an example of superstitions being popular when there is a lot of uncertainty surrounding an event. I can think of lots of examples of sports teams using lucky colors and accessories before important games. It’s also interesting that the traditional sock colors have outlived the matching uniforms. In this case, it seems like the colors are just as important as the practice of wearing two mismatched socks.

The Sweater Curse

Informant Information — SD

  • Nationality: American
  • Age: 16
  • Occupation: Student
  • Residence: San Pedro, California
  • Date of Performance/Collection: April 3, 2022
  • Primary Language: English

The informant’s grandmother was a lifelong knitter and introduced all of her grandchildren to knitting and other handicrafts. The informant regularly attended crafting circles with her grandmother as a child, which is where she learned this belief.

Interviewer: 

Can you tell me about the curse involving making a sweater?

Informant: 

So my grandma used to believe in a curse where anyone who knitted or crocheted a sweater for the person they were dating would end up breaking up with the person. Since you spend so much time making the sweater, the relationship is usually over by the time you finish it and you break up once you give it to them. She said that you could only make sweaters for family, lifelong friends, or your husband or wife after you were married. 

Interviewer: 

Did this curse apply to other gifts, or was it strictly sweaters?

Informant: 

It was always just sweaters. You could make other big stuff, like blankets, but sweaters were cursed. My sister crocheted her girlfriend a quilt once and it was fine. 

Interviewer: 

Do you believe in this curse?

Informant: 

I don’t crochet or knit, so I don’t really believe one way or the other. It makes sense though. 

Analysis:

The informant is my sister, so we grew up hearing the same superstitions from my grandmother. As a crochet and knitting enthusiast, I believe in this curse while my sister, who never enjoyed crocheting or knitting, does not. Making a sweater takes a great deal of time and effort, tying you to the intended recipient. Finishing the project may release you from a sense of obligation, allowing the relationship to end. However, it is interesting that most crafters agree that this curse is limited to sweaters– blankets, rugs, and tapestries are all considered to be “safe,” despite also being large projects. Unfortunately, I seem to have witnessed this curse take effect in real life: my roommate crocheted a sweater for her partner as a two-year anniversary gift and they broke up the same weekend that she finished it.

Bloody Mary

Informant Information — GD

  • Nationality: American
  • Age: 57
  • Occupation: Teacher
  • Residence: San Pedro, California
  • Date of Performance/Collection: March 20, 2022
  • Primary Language: English

This informant learned about Bloody Mary in elementary school in the late 1960s. Most of her friends from school also attended the same church and Bible study group, so they felt like they were a part of a very tightly-knit religious community. She shared this information with me in an in-person interview. 

Interviewer: 

Can you tell me the story of how you first experienced Bloody Mary?  

Informant: 

When I was in fourth or fifth grade, my group of girlfriends and I learned about the Bloody Mary game from some older girls. Our school bathrooms were really dark– they didn’t have any lights except for windows near the ceiling so they were really creepy. 

In the game, you had to lock yourself in the bathroom alone and stand in front of the mirror. You were supposed to close your eyes, say “Bloody Mary” three times, and then open your eyes. When you opened your eyes, you were supposed to be able to see a ghostly woman in a ballgown with black eyes and crying tears of blood. 

If you were a true Christian and believed in God, she wasn’t supposed to be able to touch you because you were too holy. If you only believed a little bit, she supposedly scratched you and left three bloody lines on your face. And if you didn’t believe in God at all or if you were evil, she was supposed to bring you into the mirror with her. 

Interviewer: 

Did you ever play the game? 

Informant: 

My friend went first, and she said that she saw Bloody Mary. I went after her but didn’t see anything in the mirror. I wasn’t sure what I did wrong so I lied about it and never admitted that I hadn’t actually seen her. 

Analysis:

This adaptation of Bloody Mary is very interesting to me as it reveals the large role of religious belief in the informant’s folk group. In this story, being exposed as a non-believer results in removal from the community as they are dragged into the mirror and disappear with Bloody Mary. Those of wavering faith are physically marked, seemingly teaching the person a lesson and informing others that the individual needs to be brought back into the community.