“When me and my brother were younger, and even still to this day, my grandfather compares us to Tom & Jerry.  Like the cartoon, Tom & Jerry.  But it’s not just for me and my brother, he believes every pair of siblings follows that dynamic.  Like the younger one being like Jerry and always fooling around and bothering the older one, Tom, who’s just trying to ignore the younger sibling.  It’s probably because that’s the way he was with his younger brother and he likes to think everyone’s the same as him.”

ANALYSIS:

It’s interesting that this folk belief is based around someone’s experiences with watching a cartoon.  Because of the informant’s grandfather noticing a parallel between his own life and the lives of his grandchildren and two characters in a cartoon show, the grandfather made an assumption about the entire human population, which I find really funny, and honestly not entirely inaccurate; I definitely understand where the grandfather is coming from, as I do believe that me and my own older brother follow this dynamic as well.  I wonder in the creators of Tom & Jerry based the cartoon off of a prominent sibling dynamic they noticed, or just thought Tom & Jerry were funny characters and that’s all.