Tag Archives: initiation

Murder in John Adams Middle School

Nationality: Mexican American
Age: 12
Occupation: middle school student
Residence: Los Angele,CA
Performance Date: April 24, 2013
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

 

Material

In 5th grade I was told that some girl was killed in the girl’s restroom at John Adams Middle School. I was also told that a guy killed the girl and that there was a lot of blood.

Context

This legend is told to the 5th graders right before they go on to middle school. Both boys and girls are told this legend.

Informant Analysis:

The informant cannot remember exactly who told her the story all she remembers is that it was a fellow classmate and that everyone in the 5th grade knew about. The informant, as a current student at John Adams Middle School, does not believe that this event ever happened. She believes that this legend was told to the fifth graders so as to scare the incoming students of John Adams Middle School.

Analysis from Collector:

I agree with the informant that this legend is told to only the fifth graders who are about to go into John Adams Middle School. When I was about to go into middle school, I too was told about a murder that was committed in the middle school I was going to attend. Even though the place in which the murder was committed is different in both legends and there are different details to the legends, both legends do include a death of a student that attended the middle school. I further agree with my informant that this legend was told to scare the incoming students because at that age, the student is going through a major transition, that transition being  going into a different ‘bigger and harder’ school. This major transition would already put some fear into the students and to further scare them it would make sense to tell them about a death that occurred in that middle school. Being told this legend about the middle school can also be considered an initiation rite of becoming a middle school student. Once the student goes into the school he/she would be a middle school student because he/she would know the legend about someone being murdered in the school. If the student is never told about the legend, he/she will never fully be part of the group because he/she would not know the legend that everyone else knows.

Queens Prayer

Nationality: Hawaiian, American
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Oahu
Performance Date: April 5 2013
Primary Language: English

When Kula and his family would have big family gatherings, they would all say a prayer before they ate their meal. The prayer was called the Queens Prayer and went like this:

Ho’onani ka ma kua mau
ke keiki me ho’o na me no
Ke akua mau ho’omai ka’I pu
Ko kea au ko kela au
Amene

(English)
Praise God from whom all blessing flow,
Praise Him all creatures here below,
Praise Him above ye heavenly host,
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
Amen.

The prayer was similar to saying grace before a meal. However, it is not solely said before a meal. It is used as an initiation to something important. Hawaiians would say the prayer to start chapel service or at the opening of a new restaurant or business or before a surf tournament. In whichever case the prayer was used, everyone involved would join hands while one person, usually the head of the family or event would say the prayer. Everyone else would quietly say the prayer along with the orator.

Washing the gels for the lights practical joke

Nationality: Caucasian, Irish, German, and Bohemian American
Age: 22
Occupation: Graduate Student in Computer Science
Residence: Minneapolis, MN
Performance Date: 3/25/13
Primary Language: English
Language: Japanese, Spanish

My informant worked in theater during her high school and undergraduate years, specializing in lighting and light designs. She worked in the lighting department at her school for quite some time and she shared with me a story about a trick that she would play on new students working on lighting at the theater. The setting was a casual lunch at a restaurant.

Informant: “We would play this joke on anyone new working on the lights for a show. We used gels made out of gelatin to put over the lights to make them different colors. After a show, they get burnt from the light, so you ask the new kid to go wash them with soap and water. But the gels would disintegrate in the water because they were made out of gelatin! Then they would come back looking all concerned and worried like, “I destroyed them!” And I would just sit there like “Ha-ha-ha.”

Me: Did anyone ever play this trick on you?

Informant: Nope, but I played it on people all the time. It was so funny. Now, gels are not made out of gelatin as commonly so the joke can’t be played anymore.

This story is an example of occupational folklore because only the experienced technical theater workers would know this trick. My informant repeats this because it is funny for her and her coworkers. She also said that it has an element of initiation because once a new person is fooled by this trick, they are then more accepted and assimilated into the group. Once they know about the joke, they can then play it on other new people as a way of showing that they are now more experienced.

Fraternity Initiation – Pledge Plays

Nationality: American
Age: 83
Occupation: Businessman - retired
Residence: Glencoe, Illinois
Performance Date: 4/10/2013
Primary Language: English

My informant attended the University of Chicago during the 1940’s and early 1950’s, and was a member of the Zeta Beta Tau, or ZBT, fraternity.  While fraternity life was different than it was at other universities and certainly is different now, they had one initiation ritual in particular that my informant remembers.  After they had become fully admitted into the fraternity, the pledges had to put on a play where they got to parody the older members of the fraternity.  Each older member had to be represented at least once during this play.  Also instead of hazing rituals, the pledges had to do tasks around the house like cleaning and other chores.

Personally, I find it amazing that the USC Trojan Marching Band, or at least the alto saxophone section of the TMB, has this very same ritual.  At the end of the Weekender trip, which is the away game against either Cal or Standford depending on the year, the freshman are tasked with putting on sketches about the older members of the band.  Every older member must be represented at some point, which often means that some freshman must pull double duty and do two skits.  The fact that a tradition so similar is still being practiced 60 years later tells me that this tradition is at least somewhat universal.

WATAHOTAHO

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: St. Louis, Missouri
Performance Date: April 2012
Primary Language: English

WATAHOTAHO

Camp shwayder

Item: A story from camp, called WATAHOTAHO

 

Transcribed from our interview:

My informant’s explanation:

“First day of every camp session,  which is in the mountains, they take everybody to this like opening in the mountains, yeah I’m not going to remember this well but, they oh I know I remember now, there was randomly in this mountains there was a stack of rocks that was unexplainable, not from an avalanche, either some natural thing or man made, it was kind of weird. It looked like a cave with some weird rocks out fornt. This camp direct has this big walking stick and he goes up there with all the campers and every time he tells this story on Watahotaho.

 

It is a story of an Indian tribe in which there was a chief and there are three sons and one is hunting, one grows things,a nd one herds, idk, but they get ina  huge fight and they all go and their land used to be very beautiful and when they got in a fight they all left and they didn’t do well making tribes, and their old tribe didn’t do well. So chief tried to have them come back, he turns to each one and tells them they need to work together.  The cave was where it all happened. You all yell watahotaho together because the spirit is still around, and the legend is that if everybody says it in unison, you can hear a spirit calling back. They send some counselor away, and they do a delayed echo so it sounds like a sprit is calling back.

Little kids really bought into it, so it was funny by the time I was older. Every year you come he changes his story a little bit, so you realize how stupid it is. “

 

What it meant to my informant: “Well it was a good way to entertain these kids, to get them introduced to camp and get them to interact with eachother. The shouting thing was just sort of fun. I would just run around camp and to make fun of it I would just yell watahotaho because I thought it was so stupid, but the kids loved it.”

There are several key elements to this tradition, like when this happens and the interactive portion of the story. The story’s theme is teamwork and community, and since this is the first day of a summer camp for kids, this encourages the children to be more outgoing and embrace each other as a community. The interactive portion supports this, forcing the kids to work together. Moreover, by yelling WATAHOTAHO, the kids are almost performing enactive speech, their shouts in unison symbolizing the bonds they create. My informant said it was most effective for smaller children, which makes sense: they are most gullible, so the counselor’s trickery would be more effective. Regardless, Justin Elliot grasped the “silliness” of the word, which is also effective for small children; letting young children speak in a different language at the top of their lungs is exciting and liberating for them, especially because they are normally a disempowered community that must follow rules like maintain “inside voices.” Thus, immediately the campers are introduced to a new community and set of rules that sets the tone for the rest of their stay at the camp.