Tag Archives: belief

Don’t Swim After Eating

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 19, 2015
Primary Language: English

The belief:

“If go swimming after you eat, you’ll drown.”

 

The informant doesn’t remember where he heard this rumor, but he thinks it was probably from a friend’s mother during his childhood. He doesn’t think it’s true now, though. In my opinion, I think this is a popular statement told to children by their parents so that they let their food digest before they get back in the water to swim. Another popular belief is that you’ll get cramps if you swim right after eating, so maybe the parents who say this more extreme belief are just trying to protect their children from painful cramps.

Kiss the Lollipop

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 19, 2015
Primary Language: English

The ritual: “My high school’s cross-country team…our sectionals which was like the last meet of the year, cause we always lose sectionals…it’s always at the same place, it’s at this elementary school in Noblesville. And we would go there and there’s like this random path into the woods, and all the guys on the team would go there together, and we would take one lollipop and everyone had to kiss the lollipop and it was super weird.”

The informant carried out this ritual for his high school cross-country team. He said that one guy on the team never did it because he thought it was too weird, probably because he thought it was too close to kissing other guys. This ritual was probably more ironic than for good luck, since the informant himself said that the team lost sectionals every year. Going in knowing that they’ll lose, the ritual for “good luck” was probably just a parody, since the ritual itself is kind of weird to begin with.

Don’t Step on Books/Paper

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 25, 2015
Primary Language: English

The superstition: “If you step on a book or piece of paper, then you have to touch it to your forehead because otherwise it’s disrespectful. It’s because books are like instruments of learning which is next to God and practically sacred so to put it to your feet shows disrespect so you put it to your forehead, which is a sign of respect, to counteract that.”

The informant is Indian American. Her parents are both from India, but she was born in California. She’s not very religious, but she considers herself culturally Indian. She grew up hearing this superstition from her parents, so she has always followed it.The gesture of putting to your forehead to negate it seems similar to another Indian superstition, that people can’t step over you, and they have to reverse their step to negate it. Although the informant isn’t religious, she still follows this religious superstition, since she is still rooted in Indian culture. I imagine education is very important in India and in Hinduism, since learning instruments can be likened to God, and sacred. Both of the informant’s parents are doctors, and she herself is studying engineering and computer science, does a lot of research, and tutors children; so I think it’s fair to say that she takes education very seriously herself. This may also be another reason she follows this superstition.

El Mono

Nationality: American
Age: 49
Occupation: Lawyer
Residence: Oakland, CA
Performance Date: March 18, 2015
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Informant: I spent the first five years of my life in Nicaragua, Guatemala and Venezuela, and we were—you know, fortunate enough to have some of the locals provide my mom with household help. Our housekeeper, she sort of functioned as my babysitter, and in order to keep me in line, she’d tell me about “El Mono.” El Mono, in the stories she told me, was this monkey who lived on the rooftops of houses where children lived, and if you misbehaved as a child—so the legend went—El Mono would come into your house in the middle of the night and steal you away. Our housekeeper clearly never shared this with my mother, so she didn’t know about the stories until one night I woke up in screaming about “El Mono” after a horrible nightmare. So, after firing the housekeeper—my mother was distraught over how upset the story made me, so she shared the story with her sister, who then took it upon herself to draw these beautiful pictures for me of “El Mono” every week, which she would mail to me from the US along with letters in Spanish from El Mono to me, telling me what a good girl I was, how proud he was of me, and how much he loved and cared for me. So, needless to say, I never had nightmares about El Mono again. And to this day, I still have my aunt’s drawings and letters.

The informant (my mom) was born in Texas but spent most of her childhood travelling from country to country, specifically in South America and regions of southeast Asia, due to her father’s work as a banker. Her first language was Spanish, and today she is fluent in both Spanish and English.

El Mono’s purpose as a legend seems quite obvious, especially given the context the informant shared with me; parents and guardians can use tales about the monster to scare children into behaving. When I began researching El Mono to see if the creature was widespread in Latin America, I found a very legend that seems more common. “El Cuco,” derived from a Portuguese monster with a pumpkin for a head, is a “dark, shapeless monster” (Bastidas) who kidnaps and consumes children who aren’t obedient. I think it’s safe to say that El Mono is a variation of El Cuco.

Citation: Bastidas, Grace. “Scary Latino Myths: Read This or El Cuco Will Get You.”Latina 26 Oct. 2011: n. pag. Web. 27 Apr. 2015.

Barbados Hair Covering

Nationality: American
Age: 83
Occupation: Retired English Teacher
Residence: San Francisco, CA
Performance Date: March 21, 2015
Primary Language: English

Informant: In Barbados, all the women wear hats—the black women—because they think that if their hair gets wet, it will turn into snakes. Yes, so they always wear hats—it’s the funniest thing! They aren’t, you know, uh, fashionable, they’ll just wear anything they can plop on their heads. They don’t learn to swim either—which is horrible, really; it’s such an important thing to know, living on an island. Oh! They also don’t like to be out after dark.

The informant (my grandmother) was born and raised in Texas. She spent many years moving from place to place across the world with her husband, a banker, before settling in Connecticut long enough to work as an English teacher at the Greenwich Country Day School. She currently lives in San Francisco, CA.

It is important to note that the informant is a wealthy white American woman who had no prior knowledge of Barbadian culture or customs before she lived on the island for a few years. She does not remember exactly who told her about this belief, but she maintains that it was “common knowledge” in Barbados. The belief that wet hair will turn to snakes is not documented online, but it’s existence may be plausible. Snakes are not common in Barbados, but the island is home to the Barbados thread snake—the smallest known species of snake (circa 2008). Sightings of this small, typically dark snake (which is spaghetti-thin) may have led a woman to believe that a piece of her hair had transformed into a snake.

Citation: Dunham, Will. “World’s Smallest Snake Is as Thin as Spaghetti.” Reuters UK. N.p., 03 Aug. 2008. Web. 30 Apr. 2015.