Informant: I actually have another folklore story. So, the musical at my high school was great. So, what happened was there was like a patriarchy with males and females. And so there was the male tradition and the female tradition. And so, once the show started…well, before every show we’d have a Grand Master. You know, for both men and women. And that’s always elected the year prior. It’d be whoever was going to be in the musical the next year.

Collector: Oh. That’s a little bit presumptuous!

Informant: Well, I mean, if you’re in the musical as a junior, you’re probably going to be in it as a senior.

Collector: That’s true.

Informant: Yeah, and so we had our own chants as well. I don’t know what the women did.

Collector: I wouldn’t expect you to know!

Informant: We all had to do our first assignment. It was that we had to give a name to our penises.

Collector: Oh!

Informant: That was our first assignment. It was due by the next performance.

Collector: Like homework!

Informant: Yeah it was homework, right? A lot of guys were like, “Oh, I already got that.” And then our second assignment was that we had to go to our musical crush and whisper our “name” in a context to them. Some had harder times than others. And then the last thing we had to do was before our final show we had to draw our “member” on some place on school property.

Collector: Oh my God.

Informant: So, it was great. Normally janitors found them before Monday morning, so they would all be cleaned already. But the ones that we hidden well enough, they’re still there.

Collector: Yes! Did yours get to stay?

Informant: I think so because I drew mine very small and on the back of a security camera.

Collector: Smart! What a genius. What name did you pick?

Informant: Mayor Dipschtick.

Collector’s Notes: It’s funny that the gender roles played out in such a unique way.  Automatically, the two sexes separated, and formed their own little secret groups with assignments.  All these assignments, however, were based on things that technically involve the opposite sex and sex in general.  This addresses the sexual tension between the two groups and how they chose to cope with that.  Also, I’ve reported other instances of “marking” school property, but never in a way quite like this.  Adolescents feel the need to leave a physical reminder of their presence at their schools, as if they’re saying goodbye in a way that can remain permanent.  Also, I think that it’s interesting that the whole thing played out as kind of a metaphor for their school life.  There was a Grand Master, who acted like a teacher, and there were assignments that needed to be completed in a certain amount of time.  Maybe this was a way of them turning something that they didn’t quite understand, like sexuality and tension, into a format that they could deal with, like a classroom.