Tag Archives: jokes

Rajasthani Wedding Games for the Bride

Nationality: American
Age: 22
Occupation: dancer
Residence: Las Vegas, NV
Performance Date: December 18, 2012
Primary Language: English
Language: Marwari, Marathi, Hindi

Rajasthani Wedding Games and Pranks
1. After the wedding ceremony, the bride goes to her husband’s house where his family will put her intelligence, courage, strength and cooking experience to the test (in a friendly series of games). The exact tests to be performed vary by family, but some that Mayuri listed were:
– The bride enters the house only after kicking a rice-filled pot with her right foot (auspicious one).
– The ring game: a vat is filled with milk and small metallic objects (along with the wedding rings) are thrown in. The bride and groom must reach in together and try and fish out their rings with one hand. The one who does so first will have the upper hand in the marriage!
– The bride must try and hold as many of the gifts that her new family will deposit in her lap. Brides will often use their veils to wrap all her new family’s gifts and carry them around. She must carry as much as she can in her sari (test of her ingenuity and resourcefulness).
– The bride must also pick up every female member of her husband’s family. This is a test of her strength.
Later on, right before the wedding night, the bride and groom will be teased together (especially by the cousins) and pushed and shoved all the way to their highly decorated bedroom.

These rituals are done to ease the liminal period for the bride. Traditionally in India, the bride does not meet her husband or his family before the marriage and so these games are done to ease the transition from her old family home she’s lived in her whole life, to her new home with her husband and his family. In India, families live together and share the same house; therefore, the rituals and games involve the whole family. The bride is also going from an unmarried virgin to a married woman on the wedding night so it is important for the bride to feel comfortable with her husband.

Dumb Blonde Joke

“Ok so this blonde just got kicked out of her village for being too stupid and blonde, well for being stereotyped that’s it she got kicked out for being blonde, so she got kicked out for being stereotyped, and as she was leaving the town she was walking by a cornfield and she saw, wait are you there, (to me) another blonde who was rowing a boat in a cornfield. So she yells at the other blonde from the road and she says “Gosh, you’re so stupid, why are you rowing a boat in a cornfield?” It’s because of you that I got kicked out of town. If I could swim, I would swim out there and kill you. ”- Collected March 22nd 2013, from a 17-year-old girl from a suburb in Colorado. the joke was in circulation among her friends in the local high school. Ironically, the informant was blonde.

“Have you heard about Sally?” an “Anti-Joke”

Nationality: American
Age: 17 and 12
Occupation: Students
Residence: Broomfield, Colorado
Performance Date: March 22nd, 2013
Primary Language: English

“Why did Sally fall off the swing? Because she had no arms. Knock Knock? Who’s there? Not Sally.” This joke is popular among middle-schoolers and high-schoolers in Broomfield, Colorado, and was performed for me by a 12-year-old boy and a 17-year-old girl. They refer to it as an “anti-joke” where two jokes are told in series, with the first being “lame” and the second being the punchline.

Muffin Joke

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 30th, 2013
Primary Language: English

“Two muffins are sitting in an oven. One muffin turns to the other muffin and says, ‘Does it feel hot in here to you?’ And the other muffin says, ‘Whoa, a talking muffin!'”

The informant learned this simple joke two years ago from her little sister. They were taking a road trip with her family, and three of her little sisters were sharing jokes among themselves. This is one she remembers. Telling the joke made the informant giggle, so she clearly still finds it funny. The joke is silly, doesn’t follow classic narrative rules, and the ending is unexpected, making it a successful joke. The informant says this is one of her go-to jokes, because she doesn’t know many good ones. The joke brings back good memories for the informant, because she loves her family and road trips.

I thought the joke was pretty funny, although I have heard it before. Furthermore, it’s not a joke only kids would find funny, but college students and adults as well. The humor in this joke is not age specific, it’s one everyone can appreciate. It relies on surprise and contradiction, two things that often can make people laugh. Someone else was in the room while the interview took place, and he cracked up for two minutes after hearing the joke. I guess he had never heard it before. I don’t think it mirrors any major themes in American culture. Muffins are a tasty and common breakfast snack. They remind me of baking yogurt muffins for a home-sciences class in middle school. I can’t find any other major connections to society other than that. I think it’s mainly just a silly, humorous joke.

 

“It’s Greeley!” – Folk Saying

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Boulder, CO
Performance Date: 4/13/2013
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

“It’s Greeley!”

The informant said that when he and his friends would smell horse manure in Boulder, they would say: “It’s Greeley!”  According to my friend, the city of Greeley would always be blamed in some form by Boulder residents when there is a scent of horse manure in the air.

The informant first heard a friend in middle school mention Greeley.  He started using the saying himself when the saying’s blaming of Greeley was confirmed – He visited Greeley and it smelled of the same scent as the wind that would occasionally sweep over Boulder.

Greeley is a city that is approximately 50 miles away from Boulder, and has a lot of stables and horses.  Sometimes the wind is strong enough to carry the scent of the horses and their manure to cities as far as Boulder.

When the informant started using the joke itself suggests that some knowledge of Greeley is essential to understanding the joke.  In fact, the informant did not know what his friend was talking about at first when he mentioned Greeley.

The saying relies on the audience’s knowledge of Colorado’s cities, particularly Greeley, in order to be humorous.  While not explicitly used to distinguish Colorado residents from outsiders, understanding of the joke would determine whether or not you live in/know of Colorado, or of the city of Greeley.

According to my friends, other cities in the area know of Greeley’s reputation as well.  He does not know if they talk about the city in the same way.