Tag Archives: high school

Junior Ring Ceremony

Nationality: Caucasian
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 4/20/13
Primary Language: English

My informant described a yearly ceremony at her high school, Notre Dame Academy, Junior Ring Ceremony. This ceremony takes place at the end of the fall semester each year. This is when junior receive their class rings. Students do not have to purchase a traditional class ring, any ring is fine. Generally, students try to get rings with stones in their class color (red, blue, purple, or green). This ceremony is really only for juniors and their families. It’s at night and the girls are required to dress up and look nice. It consists of some short speeches from classmates and faculty, a song sung by the class, and the presentation of the rings. After the rings are given out, girls are supposed to get their rings turned 100 plus the year of your graduation times, so if you graduated in 2011, you needed to get your ring turned 111 times. Each time someone turns a ring, they’re asked to make a wish for the girl. The last turn is supposed to be saved for someone special, probably someone the student admires or who has been influential in her life.

My informant graduated in 2011 from Notre Dame Academy Girl’s High School in West Los Angeles, California. She currently attends UCLA in Westwood, California. Notre Dame Academy, often called NDA, is a Catholic, all girls school with many traditions the students participate in annually. My informant told me about one that every girl looks forward to as the ring ceremony is a reminder that senior year is approaching quickly. This ring ceremony seems rather unique to NDA, but I have heard of some other high schools have formal presentations of class rings.

Calling “shotgun” for a car

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: College Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 4/24/13
Primary Language: English

The informant describes a game his friends and he would play at home throughout high school and still today in college.  He recounts many times fighting over spots in the car by playing the game, “shotgun.”

Shotgun is a game involving a group of people about to drive somewhere and get into the car.  The game involves deciding who gets to sit where in the car.  The driver takes the driving seat, but the second best seat is generally accepted as the “shotgun” or the passenger seat in the front.  The goal of the game is to get the “shotgun” seat by calling “shotgun” out while the car is visible.  Another individual can steal the “shotgun” seat if they yell out, “blitz” after “shotgun” is yelled.  This indicates that the other person is blitzing the “shotgun” call and getting the front seat.

Interestingly enough the phrase “riding shotgun” originated in 1919 and was later used in print and especially film depictions of wagons and stagecoaches in Wild West movies.  The game is commonly played among teenagers who have recently acquired their licenses.  This shows an interesting liminal stage teenagers enter when they first gain the ability to drive in high school and it makes sense that there are traditions or games that are popular among this transition.

Pre-show theater traditions

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 30, 2013
Primary Language: English

My informant describes himself as a “theater kid” in high school. He told me the rituals he and the other cast members go through before every show they perform. He said that the male and female members of the cast start out separately, and that they have slightly different traditions. This is his description:

“I obviously don’t know all that much about what the girls do before a show, because it’s kept secret. I do know they listen to… What is that 90s song? Oh, it’s ‘If You Wanna Be My Lover’ by the Spice Girls. And they listen to that and dance around, and I don’t really know what else they do. But the boys… There is a knife that has been kept up in the suspended ceiling of the boys dressing room for several years know, and we use the same knife to cut up lemons every show. And then we listen to Bohemian Rhapsody, and jump around and are crazy, and everyone eats a slice of lemon and throws it in the urinal. I don’t know who started the lemon tradition, but I know that the senior class that was there when I was a freshman… it had already been there for a few years when they were freshmen. So that’s about ten years now. So after the lemon eating, they do a stupid chant. It’s really sexist and terrible, so I don’t think I should repeat it. I actually didn’t participate in it for awhile because I was like, ‘This is stupid.’ And then the girls came up with their own rival chant, so now I participate because sexism is fine as long as it’s an eye for an eye? Right? No. Whatever, anyway… We yell this chant in the dressing room, and because the girls and boys dressing rooms are right next to each other, we like, will have battles between the girls and the guys to see who can be louder, which is usually the guys. And then everyone gets together and we get in a circle, and we pass a pulse around by squeezing each others’ hands in a circle. And we do a big a chant together which is not sexist and is just weird, which is, ‘Everybody, have fun tonight! Everybody, wang chung tonight! And in the honor of Kristin Wendel, let’s kick some ass!’ Kristin Wendel went to my high school several years ago. She was a very quiet girl who yelled, ‘Let’s kick some ass tonight!’ before her last show of her senior year. Anyway, another thing we do is, if you haven’t yet performed in our auditorium, we make you kiss the stage. It’s very low-key hazing, basically.”

This is a tradition that initially creates purposeful rivalry, but it ultimately ends by unifying the students. The chants the cast members yell divides them by gender, and they compete against each other to see who is louder. Furthermore, the nature of the chants is apparently quite sexist. Despite these divisive aspects, my informant says these traditions bring the cast together. They also pump up their energy and get them all excited to perform. They convert all their nervous anxiety into positive exhilaration. Another function of these customs is to remember and pay homage to those who came before them, such as Kristen Wendel. The fact that they repeat these same rituals before every show means that they keep the customs that had been in place for years alive. In this way, they are connecting their past to their present. By teaching these things to younger members of the cast, they also ensure that they are building connections to the future. Each student likely hopes to leave some kind of legacy, and for a few of them, a part of that will be the new variations they make on the pre-show rituals.

 

Ghost Story: Smoking in the Boiler Room

Nationality: Scandinavian
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Omaha, Nebraska
Performance Date: March 28, 2013
Primary Language: English
Language: None

Informant: “Millard North High school in Omaha, Nebraska is haunted with the spirit of a kid who was smoking one day in the boiler room. Now, I didn’t even know we had a boiler room but apparently it’s over by the wood shop. Uh, in that hallway. So, this kid was smoking in the boiler room and um a custodian started to walk down the hallway and frightened the kid uh turned around and tried to run away tripped and stumbled down the stairs, hit is head a few too many times and now when you walk past that hallway or walk into the basement, which again I didn’t really know we had a basement, but you can hear the kid’s raspy voice telling you to beware.”

The informant, a Caucasian male, was born in Spokane,Washington and then moved to Omaha. He is currently a student at USC and studies computer science.

The informant heard the story from someone at his high school. He remembers this story because he feels that “ghost stories are always more fun when they have some sort of significance to you, like you have ties to that school, for example, or if it’s in your home town.” According to the informant, the story is not “too frequently passed around,” and he is not sure if anyone at the school truly believes it, or just repeats the story as a joke.

The informant does not believe in ghosts personally, he thinks the story is kind of silly. In fact, the informant stated, “honestly, I’m not even sure if we have a basement.” The informant said that some kids at the school “fall for all of the ghost stories,” but “in many schools there will be some kids who believe that sort of thing.” The informant referred to one friend in particular who believes in ghosts about whom the informant said “I mess with him a lot and he thinks I am entirely serious.” It is possible that this story is circulated as a joke and to “mess with” students who may believe it, but the informant does not think so.

The informant says that “the moral was no smoking in the basement,” and I agree with the informant. Although the story may be used to jest about the paranormal, it ultimately discusses the illegal consumption of marijuana at a school, and the result is death. The student who broke the law is now forced to haunt the hall and warn other students not to make the same mistake. Like other legends, this tale reflects social fears and concerns about the consequences of consuming illegal drugs, breaking the law, and breaking the law on school property.