Tag Archives: middle school

Haunted Middle School

Nationality: Mexican, Scandinavian, French Canadian
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Beaumont, California
Performance Date: March 28, 2013
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Informant: “I know in the town next to us, there is a middle school and there is a legend that this boy fell into a hole in like the thirties or something and they were pouring cement and he got trapped under the cement and there was like somehow an air passage that he was able to breathe through, through the cement that they poured on top of him. But then he died there, and so now this ghost haunts the school and if you knock on the principal’s door three times, he’ll knock back.”

 

The informant comes from a small town in California. The informant states “there is nothing to do there, it is just a small town and the biggest thing we have is a Walmart.” She said that because the town is small “everybody knows each other, and we kind of grew up together.”

The middle school from the tale is located in Redlands. The informant learned this tale as a child from her mother. The informant’s mother used to live in Redlands and attended this middle school. The informant remembers this tale because “Its just one of things you’re told that you remember when you are a little kid just because it is interesting.”

The informant does believe in ghosts and has had a personal experience with a ghost. When asked, the informant recalled that “the house I grew up in until I was seven was definitely haunted, I saw his ghost multiple times, and it wasn’t just me, my parents saw him. We would go to bed with all of the windows and doors shut and we would wake up and they would all be wide open, you would hear banging on the pipes and whatnot. We found out that the person who lived there before us died in the house. So the ghost was of the guy that died there.” Thus, ghosts are very real to the informant.

According to the informant, some kids will try to knock on the principal’s door to see if they can get the ghost to knock back. Thus, some kids use this legend to go on a legend quest. The story is also rather morbid and represents a fear of death, especially a slow painful death.

Cracking Jaw Causes Brain Cell Explosion

You know that crackling, snapping sound you hear in your ears when you yawn? When I was a kid in middle school, the other kids were always trying to come up with medical-sounding, crazy ways to explain normal things a body does. And everything you did seemed to cause brain cells to die, because that was the worst thing imaginable. For a while everyone was saying that when your jaw cracks, what you’re actually hearing is the sound of your brain cells exploding. Which was super bizarre and frightening. I think they knew that wasn’t true, but we all started freaking out about it.

This explanation the kids created to explain the sound their cracking jaw made, seems like an idea kids would tell other kids to scare them like they had been scared. These frightened children would then tell their parents, who would tell them this wasn’t true. This led to a cycle of initiation, as kids scared their peers with this pseudo-medial knowledge for status. As middle school kids are often told it’s important they develop their brains, and take drug education courses focusing on how drugs negatively impact their brain’s development, it seems natural that at this age there would be so much fear that they could be causing their precious brain cells to explode.

Pig Bear Legend and Ritual

Nationality: Sri Lankan
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: La Canada Flintridge, CA
Performance Date: 3/14/12
Primary Language: English

The informant is 21 years old. She’s Sri Lankan and now attends the University of San Francisco. She entered seventh grade at Flintridge Preparatory School in La Canada in 2003 and graduated in 2009. During seventh grade, she (along with the rest of the class) was divided into groups to be mentored by a senior Peer Counselor throughout the year. These Peer Counselors accompanied the informant’s class on the annual class trip to Big Bear at the start of the year.

The informant was home for spring break this week and I took the advantage of interviewing her for this folklore collection project. She came to my house and I asked her to briefly describe the legend of the “Pig Bear” that is well known to every student at Flintridge Prep and has been passed from senior class to seventh graders for years. This is what she told me:

Informant: At night, they (the Peer Counselors) told us that we had to stay in our cabins at night because of the uh legend of the Pig Bear. It was a monster half pig half bear or maybe even just a monster I’m not sure…that came out to eat children or the children would never be seen again…So there were some of us that didn’t believe in the Pig Bear and were joking about it and once we were getting into bed there were these huge BANG BANG BANGs on all the doors and screaming in the distance…so we all ran out to see what happened. We thought it was the Pig Bears, come to get us, but it turns out that the seniors went around doing it, banging on doors and throwing things. But we were ok…ended up laughing about it after, but it was scary at first.

Me: Why do you remember this?

Informant: Because it was part of the tradition of the seventh grade trip and you don’t…it’s something that you remember when someone asks about the trip because it’s been passed down through the grades…I’ve even mentioned it to random college friends.

Me: Why do like it?

Informant: It makes the trip more exciting, more than just a school trip…it’s got a little bit of the scary story feel. The Pig Bear feel made it extra fun.

Me: Why do you think they do this every year?

Informant: It’s a rite of passage kinda…because for the seventh graders it’s a chance to bond over something funny and spooky and for the seniors, they already went through it so they can make it come alive for the baby classes.

As the informant says, the importance of the legend appears to lie in the fact that it’s closely associated with the rite of passage of officially becoming a seventh grader at Flintridge Prep. The legend binds the class together as they experience terror upon it’s supposed re-enactment, and then relief that it ends up being just a trick. Because the Pig Bear legend re-enactment takes place at the beginning of the year, it also serves as a way to initiate the new seventh graders into life at Prep. The seniors pass on this piece of school folklore and eventually, the seventh graders will grow up and have their chance to pass it on, too.

Flip Tag

Nationality: Thai-American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student (Fine Arts)
Residence: Northridge, CA
Performance Date: March 2012
Primary Language: English
Language: Thai

I was in my informant’s dorm room chatting to her roommate after class, and when I turned around, I found that my informant had flipped my backpack inside out, so that the straps and front pocket were now on the inside.

My informant learned this practical joke in middle school. She first observed the joke when it was done to her, and she subsequently performed it on others. She told me that this joke is typically played as a game of tag, so that when someone flips your backpack, you are now “it” and have to flip someone else’s backpack. The person who is “it” turns the victim’s backpack inside out, puts the contents of the backpack back inside, and zips it up. In another variation—the more annoying one, according to my informant—the entire backpack is flipped inside out and stuffed into the front pocket of the backpack. In this version, all of the contents of the backpack and the front pocket have to be removed since they won’t fit inside, and are left in a pile by the zipped-up backpack packet.

The flipping often occurred in class or at lunchtime, said my informant. Students played the game because it was a way to entertain themselves during the school day using the materials available to them. Everyone carries backpacks in middle school, so everyone is a potential victim. The goal, presumably, is to flip someone’s backpack without them catching you in the act. It probably takes skill to flip someone’s backpack quickly enough that they don’t notice, so this could be a way of impressing friends. Also, it could be a team effort to flip someone’s backpack, with someone distracting the victim while someone else flipped the backpack, turning the game into a “bonding against the outsider” scenario, with the victim being the only one who isn’t in on the joke. Because the flipping sometimes occurred during class, the flipper also had to be careful not to attract the teacher’s attention. The game is therefore a way of defying authority. The flipper also gets to go through the contents of the victim’s backpack, so part of the appeal of flip tag could be that it is a way to satisfy curiosity or invade someone else’s privacy under the pretext of a game.

Joke – San Marino, California

Nationality: Chinese
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: March 29, 2008
Primary Language: English
Language: Cantonese, Mandarin

So one day I was walking on the beach when I saw this girl with no arms and no legs crying on the shore. I went up to her and asked her why she was crying. She said, “I’ve never been hugged before.” So I gave her a hug and said, “There, now you’ve been hugged.” But she was still crying. So I was like, “Why are you still crying?” She said, “I’ve never been kissed before.” So I gave her a kiss and said, “There, now you’ve been kissed.” But she was still crying. So I was like what the heck and asked her why she was still crying. She said, “I’ve never been fucked before.” So I picked her up and threw her in the ocean and said, “There, now you’ve been fucked!”

Pierre remembers hearing this joke from a really funny guy at his middle school in San Marino, CA. Although he thinks it is a little mean, he thinks it is more hilarious. In this joke, several motifs can be seen. There is the presence of the number three, which appears in numerous jokes. The character that the teller becomes during the joke asks the girl three times why she is crying, gets three responses, and acts accordingly three times. The punch line appears at the end of the joke, as it normally does. The punch line in this one is effective because the listener has the mindset that the girl was suggesting a sexual action, but the main character of the joke ironically acts upon the other meaning of the word “fucked,” which is being in a difficult situation, and throws her into the ocean. Since the listener was led to believe that sexual intercourse was suggested but it did not occur, this joke resembles a catch riddle in which the listener is caught thinking a socially inappropriate thought because the wording or the content of the riddle actually led the listener to think in such a way.

This joke also includes profanity, the issue of sexuality, and social standards. Pierre said that he heard this joke in middle school, which is a fairly early time for children to speak profanely and address the issue of sexuality. Yet, many jokes such as this one serve the purpose of allowing children to explore adult issues that may be prohibited or considered inappropriate for children. Jokes are viewed as acceptable ways for this exploration and discussion because the issue is excused after the laughter. Social standards are portrayed within this joke as well. The whole narrative is centered on the girl crying because she has yet to experience certain things that society suggests are things that people should have experienced, including hugging, kissing, and engaging in sexual intercourse. Since it is socially accepted to have experienced these acts, the main character feels obligated to provide these experiences for the girl. However, it is also shown that simply asking for and giving out sex is also considered socially unacceptable, which is why the joke ends with a different interpretation of the action. This joke is an example of how adult issues are subtly included in jokes.