Tag Archives: American

“Between A Rock and A Hard Place” (Annotation)

Nationality: Sri Lankan-American
Age: 34
Occupation: Teacher
Residence: Northridge, CA
Performance Date: March 2012
Primary Language: English

My informant said he has heard his parents say this expression ever since he was little; however, he did not understand the meaning behind it until he was “probably a teenager.”  He says it refers to “being in a tough spot,” or getting caught in a predicament where either of the two outcomes are unfavorable.  The expression “between a rock and a hard place” presents a visual to this dilemma.  He also mentioned a synonymous expression: “picking the lesser of two evils.”

In 2004, Aron Ralston used this phrase for the title of his autobiography, which retells his experience while “canyoning” in the Utah desert.  For Ralston, “between a rock and a hard place” sums up the predicament he found himself in after a boulder trapped his arm.  While hiking deep into the Utah desert, away from regularly used trails, Ralston suddenly fell into a ravine and a boulder crushed his arm.  He was forced between two options: amputate his arm himself or die from thirst or starvation.  After being stuck in the ravine for over five days, he finally decided to cut his arm with a dull knife.  Therefore, “between a rock and a hard place” is a play on words and quite literal interpretation of what happened to him.  Ralston’s book also influenced the 2010 movie adaptation 127 Hours, starring James Franco.  The popularity of the movie brought even more fame to Aron Ralston’s book and continued to circulate the American saying.

127 Hours. Dir. Danny Boyle. Perf. James Franco. Fox Searchlight, 2010.
Ralston, Aron. Between a Rock and a Hard Place. New York: Atria, 2004. Print.

 

The Hogwarts Tree — Children’s Folk Legend

Nationality: Irish
Age: 16
Occupation: Student
Residence: Rye, New York
Performance Date: 4/15/12
Primary Language: English
Language: Finnish, Irish

When my informant was in third or fourth grade in the town of Rye, New York, she heard a legend going around the school that came to be called “The Hogwarts Tree.” According to the legend, there was a particular tree at the corner of the nature reserve that was connected to the world of Harry Potter, a sort of portal into the world of wizardry. It originated from a story that had been passed along, something of a legend in the tiny town of Rye:

“There was this boy like about our age, and he had a fight with his mom and ran away and supposedly slept at the nature reserve. Oh, he was from Milton, which was like another elementary school near us. I mean I don’t think I really believed this at first, because the nature reserve can be freakin’ scary at night. But anyway, I was in elementary school and I was like, whoa. So he was trying to get to sleep in the nature reserve, and uh, he was under this tree. He’s getting kinda scared because it’s freakin’ dark and like, it’s windy so the trees are making weird noises and stuff. And he looks up, and he sees this white owl sitting on the branch on top of him. No one sees white owls, you know? I haven’t, anyway. Well, there’s this white owl, and it looks sort of like Hedwig from the movie, like it’s big and fat and has those grey markings. So this boy’s read Harry Potter and he thinks, holy crap, it’s freakin’ Hedwig. And even though it’s dark and super windy and the branch keeps moving back and forth, this Hedwig owl is so calm and like, the boy isn’t as scared anymore because he feels like Hedwig’s protecting him. So uh, he goes to sleep I guess, and the next morning he wakes up right, and he finds the Hogwarts letter like sitting right next to him! Like the one telling him “Welcome to Hogwarts” and stuff, like, “you’re a wizard, yay!” Which is pretty much what everyone in my elementary school wanted at that point, you know, we were like all of us about the right age. Uh, anyway, he opens the red seal thing, and he reads it, and he’s super-excited and forgets about the fight and goes home to his mom, but she doesn’t believe him. She doesn’t even believe he slept over at the nature reserve, she thinks he’s just saying that to make her feel guilty for the fight, and obviously he doesn’t believe her about the owl. The boy goes around telling his friends and stuff, but before his friends could ask him about it and stuff, he just up and disappears. The next day, like, his mom comes to wake him up for school and he’s gone, and nothing’s gone but the window’s open, and that’s when she realizes she should’ve believed him.

No one knows exactly where the legend came from, but my informant said she had heard it from a friend who had heard it from a friend who went to Milton Elementary School, where the boy had supposedly gone to school. There were some people who believed it, she said, but most people did not, if only because the nature reserve was perceived to be so frightening at night that no one would ever go there to sleep alone, and because in a small town like that, such a police investigation would have been the talk of the decade. However, the most significant aspect of the story wasn’t, or isn’t, its believability, but more the rituals it spawned.

Although the legend had initially circulated amongst elementary schoolers, it eventually found its way into the collective imagination of middle school and high schools students, who began to use it to create ritualistic events. For instance, my informant said, there were always a group of foolhardy middle school kids that would make it a point, over the summer when they were bored, to camp under different trees a few nights in a row, to see if they could find the right one, “The Hogwarts Tree.” Even in high school these sort of ritualistic events proceeded, with high schoolers doing the same thing or being even more clever by daring someone to sleep under a tree alone. At one point, my informant said, when the legend was at its peak, there would be twenty or thirty groups of different middle schoolers and high schoolers (sometimes with parent chaperones, although these were the “lame” groups) grouped under different trees, using “The Hogwarts Tree” as an excuse to camp out in the middle of the nature reserve. It became fashionable to say that they had spent the summer looking for “The Hogwarts Tree,” and oftentimes people told stories of how they had come so close to finding it.

The town police had, apparently, turned a blind eye to the proceedings, seeing as how it was all some kids having fun, up until high-schoolers and college students began drinking in the reserve, having secret Hogwarts parties that my informant did not know about until she was a high-schooler herself. These and the other groups petered out as the police began discouraging them from camping in the reserve. There were still some people that ventured into the reserve to look for “The Hogwarts Tree,” but these were random groups, usually college students looking for an adrenaline rush.

This legend arose, obviously, from elementary school students’ obsession with the Harry Potter books–especially because they were of the right age to receive the letter from Hogwarts that would supposedly proclaim them a wizard. Every reader of the Harry Potter books has wanted to become a wizard, and this desire is perfectly captured in this story, which entranced first elementary schoolers, and then those older, indicating that nobody is too old for some literary escapism, or to want an excuse to camp out in a forest without parental supervision. Looking for “The Hogwarts Tree” perhaps gave them a sense of higher purpose that elevated the event beyond the traditional experience.

 

 

 

 

 

Exploding Toilets and A Corpse — Senior Prank Legend

Nationality: Japanese
Age: 17
Occupation: Student
Residence: Tustin, California
Performance Date: 2/24/12
Primary Language: English
Language: Chinese, Japanese

My informant goes to high school in Tustin, California, where he is currently a junior. A few months earlier, he had heard of a legend of a senior prank that had occurred perhaps ten or so years back, where they had flushed all the toilets at the school at the same exact time to see what would happen to the plumbing.

They had these stopwatches, right, and all these walkie talkies, and they pressed the stopwatches at the same time and flushed the toilets just as the timer went down to zero. They wanted to see if a pipe somewhere would explode I guess, but then, instead, two toilets just blew up. Uh, I think one was a female staff toilet, and the other was in one of the main guys’ bathrooms. The toilets just like, blew apart, all the porcelain and whatnot. Which was fine and all, except later when they were trying to clean up the exploded toilets, the fixer-upper guy found a hole in the wall of the bathroom and looked through it and there was uh, a dead body in there, like scrunched up and still fresh-looking, like a girl just crawled in there and curled into a ball and died or something. Anyway, he thought she was dead, but then he’s staring at her and he can’t move because he’s so freakin’ scared, and she turns her head towards him kind of, and she doesn’t have eyes, like they’re just sockets on her face, and in the sockets there’s one of those millipede things that comes crawling out. Anyway, the plumber guy told everyone but nobody really believed him because they checked later and it was gone, but still. And they fixed the toilets and stuff, but man. The guys’ bathroom is a freakin’ scary place.

No one knows where this legend originated from, although my informant said that his Latin teacher, who had worked at the school for two decades, does remember a senior prank where the seniors all flushed the toilets at once–though he does not remember anything happening as a consequence. “I’m pretty sure toilets don’t explode even if you flush a whole bunch of them at once,” My informant said, laughing, “but it makes sense that the stories spread because the bathrooms are freakin‘ disgusting here, like really bad. And it smells so much that we probably wouldn’t notice a corpse for a while.”

I feel like the legend is significant because it pits teenagers, most of whom think of themselves as invincible, against death, even if it is a very unrealistic and cinematic depiction of it. School is a place for boredom, for homework and tedious routine–to introduce a corpse into such a scene is jarring, and sets the entire nature of their everyday lives off-balance. That the legend became so widespread, however, is not surprising; people like a good scare, and school is a place of boring routine. Although my informant and his classmates probably thought this legend was very original, there are probably many, many legends of something similar to this in schools all across the world.

 

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”

Nationality: Mexican-American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Downey California
Performance Date: December 2006
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”

 

My informant who is currently a first-year college student first heard this proverb in his elementary school in Downey, CA from his teacher in third grade.  There had been a problem with certain kids being targets for bullies in class.  The teacher decided to address this issue to the class.  She told everyone to remember that even though physical pain cannot be helped, you can always choose how to take words from others.  The only way words have power is when the person allows them to hurt him or her.

This proverb is not usually used on adults but mostly on children.  I do not think this proverb can apply to adults as well because the circumstances are different.  When children taunt, the taunting consists of silly rhymes, sticking out the tongue and such whereas when adults exchange harsh words with each other, those words are personal and have the ability to hit someone at a vulnerable spot.  Parents and teachers teach young children about not allowing words to hurt them because many children tend to pick on others not for any legitimate reasons of dislike but from mere prejudice.  I believe this proverb can apply very well to children but not to adults.

“It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”

Nationality: American
Age: 61
Residence: Los Angeles County
Performance Date: April 2007
Primary Language: English

My informant told me that her mother was the first person to tell her this phrase. When my informant was a teenager she had a boyfriend that  treated other people with disrespect all the time. my informant could not take his attitude anymore so she had to split up with him. This left her wondering if she actually did the right thing. When she consulted her mother about it, her mother said, “Well, it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”, and left it at that.