Tag Archives: high school

Superstion – Irvine, California

Nationality: Chinese
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Irvine, CA
Performance Date: April 27, 2008
Primary Language: English

“During tennis matches, don’t drink red Gatorade.  Also, during breaks, only drink one sip of Gatorade and one sip of water each time, if at all.”

As a tennis player with two years of highly competitive Varsity high school tennis under her belt, Charlyne said that she developed these superstitions after personal experiences in a plethora of doubles matches.  She explains that early into her high school tennis career, she began to form these beliefs when she and her partner drank nothing but red Gatorade sports drinks during matches and consequently played horribly each time.  So horribly, in fact, that she even attributes what she considers the worst match of her entire life to the consuming of red Gatorade.  Charlyne even went on to say that red Gatorade was initially an aversion to her because of its bright color and prominence whenever it would accidentally spill onto the team’s light-colored uniforms.

In this way, Charlyne demonstrates several practical reasons for not drinking red Gatorade and for only drinking one sip each of water and Gatorade during matches.  She reasoned that the sip of water would wash down the Gatorade’s aftertaste and not leave her mouth sugarcoated and parched as she continued to play.  However, her belief that only one sip of each beverage should be allowed is unique to her, but again it derives from personal experience.  Charlyne relates that during one match, both she and her doubles partner drank two large gulps of the drinks during their break and afterward would consistently feel cramps and never play to the best of their abilities.

It is interesting that Charlyne’s personal superstitions are not simply superstitions passed down from family members or picked up from friends, but were formed of her own accord.  Personal experiences and bouts of bad luck led to her creation of these rules, proving that the formulation of superstitions and folk beliefs can be entirely dependent on the individual and his or her own identity, without the influence of society and already widely-held beliefs.

Folk Jokes

Nationality: Caucasian
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Fallbrook, CA
Performance Date: April 20, 2008
Primary Language: English

Justin Hargrove/Jeff Newman – Box of Curve Balls?

Justin is a year younger than I am, but we have still gone through the same trials and tribulations of the baseball program at Fallbrook High School. While there were plenty of bad times that we endured there, it was not all horrible. We actually had some fun sometimes. The best inside joke that we played was when we sent the newly admitted freshman running around in circles trying to find objects that did not exist. This only worked because of the fear that our head coach Matt Parker instilled in anyone who walked on the field. The young freshman would get on their hands and knees if Parker asked them too. This played perfectly into our little game.

As upperclassmen, Justin, myself, and our other friends had already gone through our initiation. Parker had already played this game on us when we were freshman. So we knew what was going on when Parker decided to start the game.

It all began when Parker would call an unknowing freshman and very firmly ask him to find any one of these four things. It was random, but each item worked just the same. Parker would yell at the freshman and tell him to “Go bring him the key to the batter’s box.” He also would ask for “a box of curve balls, the key to the flagpole, or a left-handed bat.” Now, a freshman, terrified by the mere gaze of Matt Parker would run to the assistant coach and ask for help in locating the fake item. While the rest of the team knew that there was no such thing as a “box of curve balls,” the freshman did not take the time to acknowledge exactly what he was searching for. He would be sent on a wild goose chase going from person to person asking where the box of curve balls was. If he ever went back to Parker, he would get an earful from him and then be threatened with laps if he did not continue searching.

This game would go on anywhere between 20-30 minutes. The upperclassmen would snicker anytime the freshman would come to them. But because of the fear for Parker, the freshman would continue the endless search. Eventually, the entire team would break out in laughter and the joke would end. The freshman running around had now been initiated onto the baseball team. He had joined our ring of folklore jokes. He could finally be called a part of the baseball team. And the next time that this joke was played on another freshman, he would be part of our group that knew what was going on.

Justin never was a victim of this joke, but I can vividly remember searching for a key to the flagpole my freshman year. I was embarrassed for awhile, but the experience was well worth it to become a member of the team. Feeling like I was a part of a special group of friends was one of the best feelings I had ever felt. Looking back, running around aimlessly for half an hour was well worth the reward of four years on the baseball program.

Traditions

Nationality: Yugoslavian, Irish
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Fallbrook, CA
Performance Date: April 20, 2008
Primary Language: English

Keenan McCollom/Jeff Newman – Coach Madden’s Crazy Heroics

Keenan and I have been friends for many years. We met back when we were eight years old playing little league baseball at Fallbrook. We played on all the all-star teams and summer league teams and we became good friends. We still are to this day. During high school, we were always on the same team as well. We reminisce all the time about the “good ole” days we had playing high school baseball and how much we miss it now that we are in college. The same stories always erupt in our conversations. The most common of which are our Junior Varsity head coaches crazy antics. I know we will both remember these times for the rest of our lives.

There is no better coach to play under than Coach Madden. We were both lucky enough to play for him for two awesome years and not have to play on varsity while we were underclassmen. These two years with Madden allowed us to form a close bond with our coach which then resulted in unforgettable memories. Outsiders only get to hear about all the fun that goes on while playing JV baseball. We got to live through it: Twice.

Madden was notorious for giving everyone on his team nicknames. While these nicknames were sometimes crude and inappropriate, this made saying them that much more fun. Only members of the JV team were allowed to have nicknames, so anyone out of the loop would only get to watch from the outside and not get in on the fun. The reason Madden came up with these names is because he has been a coach for over twenty years. And after that long of a time, there is no way he can remember all of his players’ names.So to counteract this, he just gave everyone a nickname that he could easily remember. For example, I was a bigger kid in high school, so to easily remember my name; he would call me “Big Bird.” As for Keenan, he was named Chief Greypants. Why you might ask? The coach told us for our first game that we were supposed to bring white pants. Now being a teenager with limited memory, or just selective hearing, Keenan brought grey pants. He was the only one to make this mistake, and consequently was given the name Chief Greypants. Keenan’s license plate also reads “Grypnts “to commemorate his nickname. Madden had dozens of other nicknames as well. Helmet, Milton, La Verne, Marshmallow, Pistol Pete, and Dewey, were only a few of the names he gave to his other players. Nicknames were only the beginning of the special things that we did on the JV baseball team.

After every away game, if we won, Madden would stand up in the bus and sing crude and funny songs to us. This is something that we looked forward to every time we would play a game at another high school. These songs motivated us to play as hard as we could to win the game so that we could have a entertaining time singing with our coach. No other team I have ever been on or heard about did this which made it that much more special.

Every year with Madden, at our year-end banquet, we would have an event known as the “beefcake” contest. Now, the normal thing in today’s society is to have beautiful women posing in their bathing suits. Because frankly, who wants to look at men, right? Anyway, Madden had every JV player come up in front of the stat girls and the parents and do a little dance in their swimming trunks. The stat girls would then rate their performance between 1 and 5 and the winner would be the person with the most points at the end. Some of the more outgoing players would get really into the competition and do things that they normally would not do. For example, some of the acts included fake six packs, strawberries, and whip cream. We got pretty into it.

Keenan and I will never forget our years playing JV baseball for coach Madden. They really were the best years of our baseball career. We made many friends and had the best times of our lives. I don’t think we would trade those years of being a part of that tight-knit group of guys for anything in the world.

Junior Varsity baseball traditions and rituals have been around since Madden began coaching. They have been passed on to every new team that he coaches. This is how the stories live on and are told over and over again. The legendary fake plays Madden created are now over 15 years old. He always tells us the stories of how effective his plays were back in the “old days.” Everything Madden does with his teams is now considered traditional because most of it is out dated.  We do it because Madden says they work. Even though in the 21st century, they really are not that effective anymore. Nevertheless, our love for our coach and his wacky traditions far outweigh any embarrassment that we might endure. And I am sure that for as long as he is coaching, he will continue to pass on his customs to his players. No doubt about it.

Folk Slang – Whitney High School, Cerritos, California

Nationality: Indian
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Cerritos, CA
Performance Date: April 21, 2008
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Supposedly, one day in AP Biology, a guy in my class who said “Kirr the Rorrie Porries” instead of Kill the Rolly Pollies. From then on, we started switching some of our L’s and R’s. We called it Rorrie Porrie. We would sometimes say raptop, instead of laptop. Things like that. We later found out that Eric (the guy who started Rorrie Porrie) never actually said “Kirr the Rorrie Porries” but someone thought it would have been funny if he did, and just told other people that he did. The class above ours has started a language called Tabish that was more elaborate and had actual words that were created for the language. Rorrie Porrie on the other hand just involved modifying English words. It didn’t spread very far, there was only a small number of people out of the entire class that would speak Rorrie Porrie. But, within my group of friends and some other people who I wasn’t friends with, we would sometimes just start talking in Rorrie Porrie. Sometimes it even happened when we weren’t trying to, which just made it funnier and perpetuated it. I don’t know about other people, but my friends and I do still occasionally break out in Rorrie Porrie just because of habit or to joke about high school, although most of the time we just speak normally.

School Quotes – United States of America

Nationality: Caucasian
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Vancouver, WA
Performance Date: March 20, 2008
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish, German

IB: The few, the proud, the sleep-deprived.

I think, therefore IB.

Heidi is currently a student in the International Baccalaureate Diploma Program, an internationally recognized curriculum that encompasses many areas of study, in addition to encouraging students to become involved in extracurricular activities and complete a capstone project. Heidi and her friends often make jokes and comments about IB, and the two above statements are examples of these. Exclusive phrases like these help to distinguish IB from non-IB students; IB students feel like non-IB students can’t really relate to what they’re going through with the Program. At Heidi’s high school, the curriculum is vastly different between the IB and standard high school requirements. As the program was created in 1968, neither of the comments existed prior to this time (terminus post quem 1968)

The first statement is a play on the United States Marines slogan: “The Few, the Proud, the Marines.” In relation to IB, the “Marines” is substituted with the “sleep-deprived.” IB students typically do not get a bountiful 10 hours of sleep per night—when I went through the program, I usually got 3-4 hours of sleep every weeknight. Certainly there were IB students who managed to get far more sleep than me, but some of us were able to dub ourselves “The 3AM Crew.” For the word “proud,” IB students are definitely proud of themselves and their achievements, nearly reaching the level of hubris. One of the downfalls of some IB students is their conceited nature, thinking that because they are IB students, they should have special treatment. As an IB alumni, I do agree with them: the IB students do deserve special treatment because of the huge quantity of work and time they must put in to their studies and extracurricular activities. As for “few,” the IB students were definitely a minority. In my graduating class of about 360 students, just short of 30 people were taking a full IB course load. The phrase asserting that IB students are “the few, the proud, the sleep-deprived,” is actually a very apt description of that particular group.

The second statement is a play on the famous quote “I think, therefore I am,” by René Descartes. One of the required courses for the IB program is Theory of Knowledge, in which students learn about various philosophers and different modes of thinking. It is a discussion-based class where students talk about current issues and abstract concepts. Often, the teacher tries to bring in relevant quotes from different figures in philosophy, in order for the students to learn about what other people thought about the process of thinking. My guess is that the phrase “I think, therefore IB” arose as a result of a teacher bringing in this quote from Descartes. For people merely hearing the phrase, it sounds as though the person is saying “I think, therefore I be,” clearly a grammatical error. However, when written as “IB,” it becomes a clever comment used to distinguish IB students from the “non-thinking,” non-IB students. It appears that this phrase is a good example of the hubris sometimes exhibited by IB students, even appearing on t-shirts.

Generally, these two phrases are not used when in the presence of people unfamiliar with the IB program. Sometimes they will be used in conversation with students who participate in the Advanced Placement curriculum. Between Heidi’s high school and its rival high school, there is an ongoing dispute about whether AP is better than IB or vice versa. Often, these sorts of phrases will be used in the arguments, as clever justifications for why IB might be better than AP.