Tag Archives: legend

High School ‘Senior Punishment’ Legend

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/4/2015
Primary Language: English

Informant (“A”) is a 19 year old, female from Rancho Santa Fe, California, and attends The University of Southern California. She is a Human Biology major.  She is of European descent and her family includes her mother, father, and older brother who attends college in Texas.  Informant has studied ballet for 17 years, including work in a professional company.

 

A: “My high school used to be a boarding school, the school is over 100 years old, so we had a lot of traditions.  First of all, the seniors have a rec room that they repaint each summer in their classes color.  It takes a ton of hard work and time and is kind of a sacred space for the seniors, and they take their positions of ‘guardians of the lawn and rec room’ very seriously.  There’s this legend about this guy named W who was this tiny, tiny 7th grader.   Anyway I guess one day he got a bunch of squirt guns and soaked some seniors who were sitting on the lawn.   The seniors of course got really mad and they chased after him and duct taped him to a tree.  I guess he like was there for hours too.  Just about every 7th grader knows this legend, and definitely knows to respect the seniors and their rec room and lawn.”

 

Analysis: The legend appears to reinforce the hierarchy maintained by the older students over the younger ones, showing that going against an established hierarchy leads to embarrassment. Her emphasis on the fact he was left for several hours plays into the fact that the punishment was quite severe for her perspective, and serves to show that forgetting one’s place in this hierarchy is an especially socially unacceptable offense.

Choking Doberman

Treat is a new friend of mine. We shared two classes this semester. He’s a sophomore transferring from Norwich University. He is in the same NROTC unit I’m in here at USC. He’s lived in some very interesting places like Italy and the Netherlands. They move around to such cool places because his father is in the military and that’s where his father got orders to. Treat really likes ghost stories and Mythology. It was not hard interviewing him in the least bit. He had stories I had never heard of or could’ve even imagined.

Treat, being a fan of horror and legends told me a story about a dog who choked on some fingers:

“A woman returned from work and found her large dog, a Doberman, lying on the floor breathing funny. So she immediately grabbed the dog and put him into her car and drove him to a vet. The vet looked at the dog but didn’t really find anything at first for the breathing problem…so he said that he’d have to perform a tracheotomy. That thing where you put the tubes down the animal’s throat so he could breathe. He told her that she shouldn’t watch, said the dog would stay the night and the she could go home.

When she got home, the phone was ringing off the hook. She answered it and it was the vet. He yelled into the phone: “Get out of the house immediately! Call the police!” When the vet performed the operation, he found a three fingers were stuck in its throat. He thought the fingers may have come from some dead person in the house.
The police came and found a dead man in a closet with out fingers.
Analysis: The question is…why do stories like this exist. It serves little purpose. Is the message “don’t leave your dog home alone.” Or “get better alarm systems”? There are many variations to this story, sometimes the dog chokes on the genitals of the man, sometimes the dog dies.

Hiding A Snake

Nationality: African American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: March 25, 2015
Primary Language: English

Informant H is 19 years old and was born in Inglewood CA, and moved to a place near Valencia just outside of LA soon after she was born. After 5 years, her little sister was born, then her little brother, and then her youngest sister. The family then moved to Bakersfield. H homeschooled for many years and then transitioned into a public high school.

So this is my dad’s side of the family, and he’s the youngest and he had 2 older brothers and then their oldest was a sister. And his mom is basically a single mom raising them up in this like really sketch neighborhood. There was this one time where my dad’s brother who was closest to him, his name was D, and he wanted a snake really badly, and my grandmother was like ‘No you’re not going to have a snake’ but he found one and he kept it and he hid it in his bedroom for like a super long time and everyone except my grandmother was in on the snake. So they would have like little codes like ‘You have to watch the snake because Mom is coming in the room’. And then this one time the snake got out and they were all freaking out and my grandmother didn’t understand why they were so stressed and they had to tell her eventually that the snake was loose. They eventually found it and she let him keep it if he had like a specific aquarium. She was like ‘You didn’t need to go through all this stress for this snake’. It’s funny because now he still gets like snakes and tarantulas and other sort of weird creatures. All the siblings banned together over this snake.

And we tell this story when we all talk about this uncle or like whatever new creature he has or whenever we went into their bedroom because all the boys shared a room. And we’d be like, ‘Oh remember when that snake got out?’ About every year during the summer my aunt who lives with my grandmother, the oldest sister, she makes this huge vat of gumbo and invites the whole family to come and chill in the backyard and eat gumbo. So then is where we revisit all the old stories. I always wanted to have the same sort of relationship with my siblings, because I have the same number of siblings as my dad did, and it makes me think about what funny stories we have like when we banded together against our parents or against other people and what special relationship we have together.

 

Analysis:

The informant tells with excitement and nostalgia about a legend in her family. This legend serves to bring the whole family together, especially she says over the summer, and they laugh about how the siblings kept a snake hidden from their mom. H’s family definitely emphasizes cohesion and support of each other. H also mentions how she would want to foster the same type of close and special relationship with her own siblings following in her dad’s example. Like her dad that grew up in a family that emphasizes support and closeness, H also believes that the family is important and wants to continue those kinds of close relationships.

The Legendary Cadet

Nationality: Korean
Age: 20
Occupation: Student, US Military
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 13, 2015
Primary Language: English
Language: Korean

Informant E was born in Korea and moved to El Centro California when she was 4. Before she came to USC she found that she was accepted into the school but also enlisted in the military. She put school on hold and deferred for a semester and went to training at the age of 17, and was one of the youngest soldiers to graduate. And after her experience with boot camp she came back to USC and started school and contracted to army ROTC. She has been deployed over the summers to Korea. She studies Psychology and Linguistics as a double major and a Forensics Criminality minor combined with dance as well. She wants to use her schooling and military experience to be in the FBI one day.

There was this one cadet and his name was Cadet D. So we have these FMs, which are Field Manuals, and it’s where all the army rules and regulations are and it literally has everything. And its very thick and detailed, there’s so many different aspects. So Cadet D, and I don’t know if he memorized the entire thing, but he would always know what to address. So we would be talking about like ‘Oh this is the right way to do this’ and someone would say ‘No its like this’ and he would put his little finger up and say ‘Well according to FM bla bla bla dash blab la, it says,’ and he would recite it off the top of his head. And he had this really nasally voice. And so today even some of the cadets that don’t know him if they’re having like a smart aleck moment they’ll put their little fingers up and say, ‘Well according to blah blah balh,’ and they’re being sarcastic but everyone knows who he is, even if they’ve never met him.   I knew of him, I didn’t know him too well though. But everyone has heard about him and will all do the same mannerism as him. It’s a fun, teasing thing. Its remarkable he memorized the entire thing and knew what to reference but it was also sort of funny because who has time to do that as a college student? No one really wants to have no life and memorize the entire manual, it’s not negative but it’s a joking playful kind of way. When things get stressful or tense sometimes someone will say ‘Well according to…’ and everyone will bust out laughing because they know who he’s all referring to and everyone will take a step back, laugh about it, and then come back and compromise and agree to do the specific thing. This legend will keep going through I think. People below me have carried on his tradition.

 

Analysis:

Here informant E talks about a legend in the military about a cadet who went above and beyond the already large demands of the military to memorize the entire field manual. She talks about how the stories of this cadet have already taken a life of their own and are likely to continue even after she’s left USC. Imitating this person also serves to lighten the mood and release tensions while fondly remembering a cadet who went above and beyond.  The military can be very tense and stressful, and its important sometimes to have a way to lighten the mood so everyone can work more effectively, and it also helps to bring the community together through humor.

“Apricot Jelly and Tanks”

Nationality: American
Age: 31
Occupation: USMC
Residence: California
Performance Date: 20 APR 2015
Primary Language: English

Context: Live Interview, discussion about Marine Corps infantry culture and history.

“So when I first heard about tankers, tank crewman, tankers, when they were afraid of apricots, I was in bootcamp. One of the drill instructors made fun of a recruit who wanted to be a tanker. And he said, ‘watch out for those apricots’, and he said apricots were bad luck. Then, when I was in the fleet, on my first deployment to Afghanistan, my Lt James Beattie, he was a tank officer and volunteered to deploy with my unit (LAR, Light Armored Reconnaissance). We had LAV’s, it’s not a tank, but it has 8 wheels and a smaller turret on it. On our deployment to Afghanistan, and for the Marines on our vic, Osbourne was the driver. Any time he found anything apricot, he’d bring it on the vehicle, and he’d show it to the Lt, and the dude would freak out, and he’d make us throw it off the vic. One day, Osbourne forgot to tell him he had apricot jam, and they hit an IED and the Lt broke his thumb and Osbourne got a concussion. I mean, everyone lived, but it was still…… apricots on the vehicle, and the vehicle hit an IED. And then after that happened, Lt told me a story about WWII. About how one of the drivers didn’t believe the apricot thing, and he wrote apricots on the bottom of the tank while he was doing maintenance, and the tank hit an anti-tank mine. Yep. So from that day on, I .. I don’t mess with any apricots on any tank or tank like vehicle.”

Personally, this piece is a funny little legend I’ve heard quite a bit, but never experienced or seen. Almost all of the Marines I know have either heard about it or have their own stories. Hopefully I’ll never actually have to find out whether or not it’s true, although I highly doubt that there’s any causation in these cases.