Tag Archives: high school

Folk Object: Spirit Stick

Nationality: American-black, African-American
Age: 45
Occupation: Pharmicist
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 21, 2013
Primary Language: English
Language: None

Spirit Stick

My informant was a member of the Drill team in high school. In high school the drill team would go to drill camps with teams from other schools. There would be mini-competitions between the schools. Whichever school had the most school spirit was given the Spirit Stick. According to my informant the Spirit Stick was 1 and half to 2 foot long cylindrical stick with a 1 and a half to two inch diameter, just big enough to keep a grip on. She says it was decorated but she can’t remember exactly what it looked like. The Spirit Stick cannot touch the ground. Dropping the Spirit stick on the ground is bad luck. She wasn’t told what type of bad luck would occur but she says it was bad luck for the drill team not the football team. It would probably result in the drill team doing poorly at a competition.

This item shows how the drill team is a distinct community from the football team. The two groups may interact because its the drill teams jobs to perform at games. However, the drill team have separate camps and the meet with opposing teams in a different setting a, at a camp and on the field. Also any bad luck caused by dropping the spirit stick reflects negatively on the drill team not the football team.

Backyard Football

Nationality: American
Age: 53
Occupation: Radio producer and sports media
Residence: Lake Bluff, Illinois
Performance Date: 3/18/2013
Primary Language: English

My informant used to play tackle football – yes that’s right, TACKLE football – in a friend’s backyard, with no pads or helmets or anything.  His friend had a large enough backyard to accommodate play.  Also this was, according to my informant, back in the days before wavers and rampant lawsuits and whatnot.  If you got hurt, you got hurt and went home and that was the end of that.  So everyone would get together at this one person’s house and divide up into teams, usually it would be 5 on 5, but sometimes as big as 7 on 7.  It was self-hike, and you could pass or run.  The backyard was big but it wasn’t quite football field huge, so there were no distance markers, just two end zones marked out.  You had to get a first down or a touchdown or else you would be forced to give up the ball.  First downs were obtained by making two complete passes.  Players were also allowed to throw lateral passes during plays, making the game very “Razzle Dazzle” as my informant put it.

While I have never played padless tackle football, I have played several games of small-field football.  Usually there were one of two ways you could make a first down.  Either you had to cross the halfway point of the field, or you had to make two complete passes during your first four downs.  Also when the ball was turned over on downs, the other team simply took their ball all the way back to where it would be if the original team had made a touchdown.  Interceptions, on the other hand, are played at the spot where the interceptor is deemed down.  Back in the 70’s though, people were not as uptight as they are now about kids getting hurt and roughhousing and such, and parental supervision was hardly required for kids to play sports.  This does not necessarily mean that parents were less concerned with the safety of their children than they are now, but instead that no one wants to get sued, so they make sure that no harm befalls their children or, more importantly, that no harm befalls other children while they are around.  As soon as someone figured out that you can so another person when your child gets hurt at their house, everyone was in a hurry to make sure playdates and games were absolutely safe, lest they get their butt sued.

The Sucks

Nationality: Caucasian
Age: 20
Occupation: USC Student
Residence: Colorado
Performance Date: May 5, 2013
Primary Language: English
Language: Basic German

Ok, so in my high school winter guard team we had these things called sucks. We had them before every show we did. We also had them during color guard season, as like a pre-show ritual. We’d all eat jolly ranchers or life savers or whatever we got that week and say “Suck hard now so you don’t suck later.” And usually some sex jokes were made to lighten the mood, especially by my coach.
The main worry was finishing your suck before we started the show, cause you didn’t want to be sucking while you performed. But you have to finish it. And you actually had to suck hard in order to avoid the bad luck.

This is a high school Drama Club tradition that creates a sense of community through the team conducting a shared superstition to unite them before a performance. Although the “sucks” are a superstition that potentially has a placebo affect for the performers, much of the value of this folklore also comes from the inside jokes the club members would make based on the “suck” tradition. The dirty jokes and funny phrases helped solidify a team that would need to work harmoniously to pull off something as challenging and nerve-wracking as a high school play.

Booty Shaking, Vomit Dance for Good Mojo

Nationality: Caucasian
Age: 20
Occupation: USC Student
Residence: Colorado
Performance Date: May 4, 2013
Primary Language: English
Language: Some German

Before every competition, my high school theater group would circle up, and shake all of our bad mojo/energy into the center of the circle. It usually involved some brushing off, fake vomiting, booty-shaking, etc until our jitters were out of like two minutes had passed. Then we all visualized that nasty ball of nervous energy, lifted it up as a team, and and threw it far far away. It made us perform better.

This is a ritual the theater group would conduct. For superstitious reasons they would join in a type of bad mojo warding dance. Obviously this ritual provides comfort, marks the occasion of the competition, and provides a good placebo affect, but the biggest benefit is likely that the team members joining together to do an embarrassing dance provided the club with a strong feeling of community.

Throwing Eggs and Flour — Japanese High School Graduation

Nationality: Japanese
Age: 47
Occupation: Housewife
Residence: Irvine, CA
Performance Date: 3/29/12
Primary Language: Japanese

In Japan, there is a custom whereby the graduating students of a high school, after the graduation ceremony is over, run into the main courtyard and throw eggs and flour at each other.

My informant spent most of her life in the city of Naha in Okinawa, Japan, and participated in this custom at the end of her three years at Shuri School. She said that all except the dullest of students participated, and that there were always a few students assigned each year to buy the eggs and flour for the entire graduating class. They’d throw indiscriminately until everyone was covered in doughy gunk. Friends would oftentimes chase each other around. My informant said that it must have been the freest time of her life, and a time she couldn’t look back to without nostalgia. There was all the anticipation and excitement for the future, she said, and she remembered how freely everyone was laughing, so incredibly happy if only because, deep down inside, they knew they’d be leaving each other soon. In a way, this custom would be the last ritual of high school they would be able to exercise.

But how had this custom come about? My informant said that it was probably because the graduates wanted to celebrate their new-found freedom from the school system. Japanese schools are traditionally very strict about their dress codes, requiring uniforms from pre-school on to the end of high school. The uniforms come to define the students by the school they go to, and are symbolic of their obedience and compliance to the educational systems of Japanese society. Many students, even back in the seventies when my informant when to high school, must have felt some frustration for these rules, and for the lack of freedom that this allowed their individuality. In most schools, my informant said, there were and still are, rules about the length of girls’ hair, and the color of students’ socks. Therefore, throwing eggs and flour after the graduation ceremony and ruining (if only temporarily) the uniforms that had defined them for three years is a form of modest, socially acceptable rebellion–all in good fun, the students’ way of saying to their teachers and to the school, we don’t need to listen to you anymore! Since there’s probably nothing that causes more of a mess and is as easily obtained as eggs and flour, this exact custom had come about.

Strangely enough, when I was telling one of my Korean friends about this custom, he told me that his friends in a Korean high school had done the exact same thing upon their graduation. It seems, then, to be a custom in some or all parts of Korea as well. Perhaps this custom is something that runs as a common thread between Asian countries because of the widespread use of school uniforms, and strict school policies. Similar to the way that American high school graduates throw their caps in the air after their graduation as a small form of rebellion and show of their independence, Japanese and Korean students throw eggs and flour at each other to mark their freedom from the uniforms that had defined them for most of their youth.