Tag Archives: school

Legend – Stepping on the School Seal

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Bozeman, Montana
Performance Date: May 1, 2021
Primary Language: English

Context: 

My informant is a 21-year-old female MSU student from Southern California. She heard this story from a friend who went to a different university, though she couldn’t remember which one. This story was collected when we were on a phone call and I asked her if she knew any school lore. 

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Main Text:

JV: “Ok so one story I remember hearing about from a couple years ago. I can’t remember the school, but according to A, at their university there is a place where the school seal is on the ground and some distance away is a statue of the school mascot. The story goes that if any graduating senior steps on the seal, they have to touch the statue within five or ten seconds or they won’t graduate… Apparently, A saw a guy step one foot on the seal. He paused, yelled a curse, then dropped everything he was carrying to sprint for the statue.”

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Analysis:

Many schools seem to have superstitions surrounding stepping on school seals prior to graduation. School traditions and lore are one of the ways to build community and are especially important at large schools where students otherwise do not have much in common. Stepping on the deal bringing bad luck might reflect an inherent respect for the school and its official representations, which need to be honored and not metaphorically sullied by people stepping on them. Having a way to “break the curse” provides a fun ritual for students to witness. However, it’s also interesting to note that even students who would probably say they don’t believe in magic will drop everything to participate in the ritual as they don’t want to jinx themselves on the off chance that it might actually be real. For another description of traditions surrounding stepping on school seals, see Laskowski, Amy. “The Myths and Legends Behind the BU Seal.” May 9, 2019. http://www.bu.edu/articles/2019/boston-university-seal/

Pen Fight – School Game

Nationality: Indian
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Irvine, CA
Performance Date: May 1, 2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Hindi

Context:

My informant, AS, is a 19-year-old Indian male who grew up in Mumbai, though he has lived in Southern California for the past three years. He went to a private school in Mumbai, and this game was played at his school, as well as other schools. This piece was collected during a facetime call, when I asked him to share some traditions from home. I refer to myself as SW in the text.

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Main Piece:

AS: “I was gonna tell you about a game we used to play in class… it’s called pen fight – where we would take pens that we use to write with and put them on the desk, and you’re supposed to flick your pen so that it hits the other person’s pen, and you’re supposed to like, get them off the desk, just from flicking your pen towards the other one. 

SW: “That sounds nearly impossible.”

AS: “No! It was, it was so much fun. Not in one go you get like multiple goes. You go once, then the other person goes, and so on and so forth.”

SW: “That still sounds nearly impossible.”

AS: “How? I think you’re imagining it wrong. Like, take a pen, flick one end of it so that it like, flings towards the other pen and it hits it.”

SW: “Right. You’re forgetting that I have absolutely zero hand eye coordination.”

AS: “Hahaha yeah. But, it basically came down to who had a heavier pen. But sometimes you’d just play like, with random pens. That was a big part of like, seventh, eighth grade. Everyone played that.”

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Informant Analysis:

SW: “Why?”

AS: “Cause we had nothing better to do. And then eventually it got so bad that like, while we were playing that pens would leak, get onto our shirts, and… teachers had to step and be like ‘yeah this is not allowed anymore. You can’t play this.’”

SW: “But did you keep playing it even after it was technically banned?”

AS: “Of course. It was addicting. It was so addicting that we would like, beg our teachers for free periods just so we could play that. Cause breaks weren’t enough… And then people would buy like, expensive pens just so they could play pen fight with them. They wouldn’t even care like, about whether they damaged the pen or not. They just cared about the win.”

SW: “So was there like, this whole hierarchy of who was better at and stuff?”

AS: “Yes there was. It was actually one of the… it was actually a thing like, even though there was like a hierarchy of ya know, cool people and uncool people, it was actually the one thing that actually brought us together, in a way. Just, nobody cared about class, in that context.”

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Analysis:
Pen fight is a good example of Children’s folklore and folk games. The rules are very easy and anyone can play, as the only materials required are a pen and a table of some sort. The game served to bring the students together as everyone played and enjoyed it. Since Indian culture can often be sharply divided by class, it’s important to have practices that bring people together that may not otherwise interact, and games are a good way to accomplish this. The fact that my informant would buy pens specifically for use in pen fight shows how invested the students were in this game. Additionally, the game seems to have served as a way to test boundaries by doing something that was “banned” but ultimately not dangerous, which can be an important part of children developing identity and learning to think for themselves away from authority figures.

Iranian Nursery Rhyme

Nationality: Iranian
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Glendale, California
Performance Date: February 18, 2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Farsi

Main Piece

Original Script

Phonetic Script

Pinky miguyad, “boxzarit dozdi konam”

Angoshte halghe miporsid, “che chizi ra mitavonim bedozdim?”

Angoshte vasat eztehar mikonad, “chizi bozorg va taloey”

Angoshte eshare miporsid, “che kasi pasokhe khoda ra midehad?”

Angoshte shest pasokh midahad, “man boyad zira man bozorg va ghavi hastam.”

Transliteration

Pinky said, “let me steal do.”

Finger ring asked, “what thing we can steal doing?”

Finger middle declare doing, “something big and goldy.”

Finger pointing asks, “who answer God will?”

Finger thumb answered, “I shall, since I big and strong am.”

Translation

The pinky says, “Let us steal”

The ring finger asks, “What can we steal?”

The middle finger declares, “Something big and gold!”

The index finger asks, “Who shall answer to God?”

The thumb answers, “I shall, for I am big and strong.” 

Background 

My informant’s mother used to recite this nursery rhyme to her when she was little. My informant says that nursery rhymes pertaining to the fingers are very common in Iran, and there are many children’s books dedicated to giving fingers personalities. This particular rhyme, my informant believes, was local to her family because her schoolmates weren’t familiar with it. She believes that the purpose of this nursery rhyme was to teach her about the existence of roles in society. She associated the physical stature (length and width) of each of her fingers with certain personality traits. For example, the pinky is the weaker person who suggests to sin and steal, the ring finger is the accomplice, the middle finger is the materialist, the index finger is the responsible one who reminds them of the consequences of their actions, and the thumb is the voluntary scapegoat that sacrifices himself so that the hand can succeed.

Context

This nursery rhyme was told to teach children about the types of people in society. My informant cannot recall the first time she heard this from her mother, but can confirm that it was a common occurrence during her playtime hours with her mother. 

My Thoughts 

I think societal roles are an interesting concept to teach children. It is very difficult to try to teach children about the different types of people. Usually, that is learned through experience. I thought of this nursery rhyme as a type of cautionary tale, as if it is telling us to stay away from the pinky, ring and middle finger personalities and make acquaintance with the index finger and thumb personalities. My informant was young when she heard this rhyme, so it seems fitting that her mother would warn her about the different types of people in this world so that my informant can surround herself with good people in school. 

Main Piece: Mad Bess

Nationality: American
Age: 11
Occupation: Student
Residence: CO
Performance Date: 04/12/2021
Primary Language: English

Background: The informant’s elementary school is said to be haunted by the ghost of a former tenant of land, Mas Bess. The school’s campus is very old and used to house many of the town’s silver mines in the late 19th century. The buildings have been remodeled, but never torn down. The school’s headmaster tells the students that if they are destructive towards the land or the buildings, Mad Bess will not be happy and will curse us all. 

Context: I asked the informant if she had ever seen a ghost before and she told me that she has yet to see her with her own eyes, but knows that Mad Bess is always looming around school. She promised me she was not afraid of Mad Bess, but some of her classmates are. She told me that she would never litter on the campus or disrespect the playground or the classrooms because she is certain Mad Bess would cause a miniature earthquake at her school. 

I also asked the informant if the teachers speak about Mad Bess frequently and she responded very matter-of-factly “Of course they do. Mad Bess is part of our community. The school would be incomplete without her. She has been on campus longer than any of the rest of us and deserved to have her home taken care of.” 

Thoughts: I attended the same school as the informant about a decade ago. While I was at the school, we had a different headmaster, but the legend of Mad Bess was the same. She was spoken about in two contexts. One, she was a legend of entertainment that served as a community point of connection. Two, she gave the teachers a threatening ghost story that they could strategically use to make the children behave. They could scare us into being respectful because the consequences of not doing so were grave. This is a folk legend that has been circulating and bringing together people on the campus since its founding. Ghost stories have so many purposes!    

Yearbooks as Folk Art

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: student
Performance Date: 4/23/20
Primary Language: English

Main Piece: 

The following is transcribed from a conversation between me (LT) and my informant (MS). 

MS: So, a yearbook is traditionally issued at the end of the school year when you’re in elementary school through high school… and they have pictures of everyone in the school taken throughout the year… and you’ll usually write messages in your friends’ books.

LT: But not all messages are equal (laughs). 

MS: Yeah, like in elementary school, everyone just wrote their names because we didn’t know how to write many things, but generally, in high school, it’s bad to just write “HAGS,” which means have a good summer… you want to write something more heartfelt because people often keep yearbooks and will want to be able to reminisce on memories and stuff in the future, so you need good messages. If someone writes “HAGS,” they probably don’t know you that well. 

Background: 

MS is one of my best friends, and she grew up in Los Angeles. She got her first yearbook when she was six years old, at the end of Kindergarten. She often jokes that she’s a “hoarder” because she keeps a lot of things for their sentimental value, including yearbooks. She actually just read through all of her old yearbooks the night before our interview since she “wasn’t doing anything better during quarantine.” Her favorite thing about yearbooks is reading the messages. She likes to think about who she’s still friends with and who she doesn’t stay in touch with. She also likes the messages that remind her of memories she wouldn’t have thought of on her own. 

Context:

MS and I normally see each other most days at USC, and we’ve been continuing to FaceTime often during this quarantine period. This piece was collected during a “Zoom Happy Hour” with our friend group. 

Thoughts:

In American culture, we often stress the importance of being “cool in high school.” Media often promotes the idea that an American teen’s self worth can be measured in how many friends they have. Yearbooks are a physical way we can quanitize that. I remember reading through my mom’s old yearbooks as a child, and I was so impressed by how many people had signed it. When I was in high school, I would actually get stressed and feel pressured to make sure every blank page in my book was covered with signatures. Now, as a college student, I don’t even know where most of my yearbooks are. In MS’s case, it’s nice to reminisce about the memories with dear, old friends. However, she doesn’t particularly care about the messages written by people she wasn’t close to. Yearbooks symbolize the things that felt so important as a teenager that don’t particularly matter later in life. Inherently, yearbooks are a really sweet tradition that should be treated more authentically.