Tag Archives: Riddle

El Mamey

Nationality: Cuban
Age: 62
Occupation: House Cleaner
Residence: Torrance, Ca
Performance Date: 4/22/2012
Primary Language: Spanish

“Iva por un caminito y me encontre un barilito, le meti el dedito y me salio coloradito. Que es?”

English:

I was going down a road & I found a small little barrel, I stuck my finger in it and it came out red. What is it?

Answer: El Mamey ( A fruit with a brown rind and an orange-red center)

This cuban riddle (dichos) is one based on agriculture, as much of their folklore is. Their culture is very much crop-based, so this is logical. My informant, having been raised as a field worker in cuba, knows many of these riddles and sayings.

El Platano or The Banana

Nationality: Cuban
Age: 62
Occupation: House Cleaner
Residence: Torrance, Ca
Performance Date: 4/22/2012
Primary Language: Spanish

“Oro parece plata no es, el que no adivine bien tonto es.”

English:

It looks like gold but silver it is not, who ever does not guess is really dumb.

This cuban dichos, or riddle, is a clever play on words. Anyone who speaks even rudimentary spanish can likely guess at this one when hearing it spoken out loud, hence the insult towards those who cannot answer it. “Plato no es,” or the “it’s not silver,” of the riddle sounds very much like “platanos,” or banana. My informant, as someone who often worked with crops as a field worker in cuba up until her early twenties, heard many riddles and saying involving fruit and other crops. With platanos being one of cuba’s main exports it’s of little surprise that a few of Cuba’s narratives and riddles center around them.

Advanced Easter Egg Hunt

Nationality: American
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 25th, 2012
Primary Language: English

“So, my mom is an artist, she’s a painter, and my dad did, um like a lot of writing and stuff, he’s like an English dude. He’s American. Anyways. Um, for Easter, we would, we would have Easter Egg hunts, my sister and I. And um, it started off, we’d come, we’d come downstairs and there’d be these Easter eggs, and you’d open it, and it’d be a scrap of paper that would be cut in a weird shape, and on one side would be like, a part of a drawing, but you don’t know what the drawing is, and on the other side, would be, um, a clue. A poem or a limerick my dad made. That would lead you to, it would be a clue to like, find the next egg, in a different part of the house. And so you’d read the clues and try to find each egg, until you, you finally find the basket. And each of these papers, its the poem on one side and the drawing on the other, and once you got the basket, you’d have all the pieces, you assemble them and you tape it together, and then you’d flip it over and it’d be, like my mom would have, um, she’d uh, she’d have drawn like an Easter themed drawing, like one of them was like me from my senior yearbook photo, but with bunny ears drawn on, and she, um, also drew like the Scream, but with like bunny ears. It’d be a clever take on Easter themes.”

 

This tradition interests me, because it takes the candy, which is usually what Easter is about for kids, and makes it secondary. The riddle clues the source’s dad wrote are almost a sneaky way of making Easter Egg Hunts educational. It is also a way for both of the source’s parents to pass down their love for the arts to their children, and it worked, as the source never mentioned candy once when talking about the Easter Egg Hunt, she remembers her parents for being artists, and taking time to create something for her and her sister.

The Sexist Doctor Riddle

Nationality: American
Age: 56
Occupation: Graphic Designer
Residence: Massachusetts
Performance Date: March 15, 2012
Primary Language: English
Language: Italian, Spanish

The following is a riddle my informant told to me:

A man and his son were driving down an icy road. When they took a corner, the car flipped. After a while, two ambulances came, one took the father to a hospital in the west, the other took the son to an hospital in the east. The nurses rushed the son into surgery, because he was losing a lot of blood. The doctor entered, and after looking at the boy exclaimed: ” I can’t operate on this boy, he is my son!” How can this be?

Answer: The doctor is the boy’s mother

My informant told me that he tells this riddle often at parties or to his kids’ friends. Half of the time people guess the answer right away, but the other half of the time it completely stumps them.

When I first heard this riddle from my informant I could not figure it out. I thought it had to do with the sun rising, or another meaning of the word: “son”. As it turns out, it just reflected how the term “doctor” is still associated more with men than with women. I believe that this riddle is important because it pokes fun at the sexism of American society.

Two Twin Ducks

Nationality: American
Age: 11
Occupation: Child
Residence: Frisco, Texas
Performance Date: April 9, 2012
Primary Language: English

Lawson Franklin Echols-Richter

Houston, Texas

April 9, 2012

Folklore Type: Riddle

Informant Bio: Lawson is my youngest cousin. He is eleven years old. He is from Frisco, Texas and has lived there his whole life. Lawson is the younger of two boys, and both of his parents are Methodist Pastors. He enjoys video games and showing off his skills of dancing and flipping a fedora onto his head. I call him The Dude.

Context: I saw Lawson briefly with his father when my grandfather (not ours) passed away. I asked him what were some jokes he had been learning at school. He said he could not remember any jokes, but he knew a few riddles.

Item: So the two twin ducks sitting in a movie theater next to each other they’re both twins, but they are not born on the same day how is this possible? The answer is they are two twins not from the same family.

Informant Analysis: He said it’s just funny.

Analysis: This riddle is pretty intellectual in regards to the answer. It is also pretty intellectual humor that is simply derived from people attempting to figure out the riddle and enjoying the answer. It is not vulgar which could indicate that Lawson is not quite yet at that age of figuring out usual boy topics such as bathroom humor, or his cousin and father were not the ideal people to tell a vulgar joke too. The ducks do however denote a slight sense of innocence because of how much children love animals. Either way the joke demonstrates young boys attempting to play with and twist different scenarios in the world around them.

Alex Williams

Los Angeles, California

University of Southern California

ANTH 333m   Spring 2012