Tag Archives: stick

Pooh’s Sticks

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Richardson, TX
Performance Date: April 30, 2021
Primary Language: English

Main piece: Pooh’s Sticks is something we always do, and my dad did it as a kid too, where you find a pond with a bridge over it, or a river – something that has moving water. Everybody finds a stick that they think is going to be the winning stick, you drop it off one side, run to the other, and whoever’s stick comes out first is the winner. 

I don’t know why we call it that. I think it comes from Winnie the Pooh, they do that.

Background: O is twenty years old, but has been playing Pooh’s Sticks since early childhood. While she grew up in Richardson, Texas, she was taught this game by her father, who grew up in Malmesbury, a town in Wiltshire, England. She and her brother, who is sixteen, continue to play Pooh’s Sticks with her parents. The game is not specific to a particular location; she says that they’ll play the game whenever “we come across a good bridge and river”. 

Context: I initially approached O to discuss folklore in the visual arts, as she is an illustrator. While we were discussing it, she asked if she could tell me about folklore from her childhood. I enthusiastically said yes, and she told me about Pooh’s Sticks. She finds the game quaint and charming, and got really excited when telling me about the races she’ll have with her parents and brother. It’s a game she still enjoys playing to this day.

Analysis: This folk game appeals as it costs nothing to play, can be played with any indeterminate number of players, and requires no skill set nor set age. Pooh’s Sticks was initially taught to O as a small child by her father, showing that it is a way to keep a kid entertained when there are no toys or other means of entertainment around. It also gives little kids equal opportunity to win the game, which is a rare occurrence for young children, and something O cited as a particularly exciting part of playing – that she could beat her mom or dad at something. M, O’s father, grew up in the rural village of Malmesbury, and O recalls him telling her about many games from his childhood, all stemming from the nature around them – he and his friends would play frisbee with a frozen cow patty, or throw sticky burs at people to tease them. It seems as if Pooh’s Sticks was another game that arose from this setting, although O (living in Texas) has played this game with her parents in multiple locations.  

Stick Games

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 13, 2018
Primary Language: English

The interviewer’s initials are denoted through the initials BD, while the informant’s responses are marked as DG.

DG: Over the summer, I learned the stick game. Basically how it works is that you’ll have sticks, and you play with a group of friends around you in a circle. You tell them you’ll put the sticks out to signify a number, but you start putting them out in a random order, and what you’re actually doing is tapping the number out on your leg. So, they’ll try to guess it, but they’ll keep getting it wrong because it’s not actually a number from the sticks. You keep telling them that they’re focusing on the wrong thing or looking at the wrong thing, while you keep tapping out a different number. Usually people won’t get it for a good fifteen minutes, and so it’s something you do when you’re bored, or if you want to irritate your family and your friends. So usually, it’s people you know, because if it’s people you don’t know, it’s not that fun.

BD: Where’d you learn this game from?

DG: I learned this over the summer from my supervisor.

BD: Do you know where your supervisor learned this from?

DG: I have no clue.

 

This is the first time I have heard of this game, and searching for it on the internet yielded close to no results, because of the vague nature of a game with sticks. However, it is very similar to game played by children that are meant to trick each other. It is likely that there are variations of this game with different objects, but seeing as the informant does not know the origin of this game, that would be a poor inference to make.

 

The Chocolate Ice Cream Cone Song

Nationality: American
Age: 49
Occupation: Engineer
Residence: San Jose, CA
Performance Date: 3/20/15
Primary Language: English

My (hold note) mommy said if I’d be good she’d send me to the store,

she said she’d bake a chocolate cake if I would sweep the floor,

she said if I would make the bed and help her mind the phone,

she would send me out to get a chocolate ice cream cone.

 

And so I did

the things she said,

I even helped her make the bed.

Then I went out,

just me alone,

to get a chocolate ice cream cone.

 

Now (hold note) on my way a-comin’ home I stumbled on a stone,

and need I tell you that I dropped

my chocolate ice cream cone.

A little doggie came along and took a great big lick (slurping sound),

and then I hit that mean ole doggie with a little stick.

And he bit me

where I sat down

and he chased me all over town.

And now I’m lost,

can’t find my home,

it’s all because of a chocolate, chocolate, chocolate ice cream cone.

 

The informant was my father, a 49-year-old engineer who currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, but who grew up in the area surrounding Austin, Texas. The song is one that his mother used to sing to him and his siblings when they were little. The song was primarily sung right before bed, as well as occasionally on long road trips. The informant says his mother would sing it to the children almost every night, sometimes “perfunctorily,” sometimes smiling and adding “extra ‘chocolate, chocolate, chocolate’s’ on the end.” The informant sees it as a mix of a “bizarre lost kid fairy tale” and a “moral lesson for young kids growing up,” the lesson being, “don’t go out on your own or, you know, you might get lost and never find your way home again.”

 

This song was collected while I was home for Spring Break and performed in my living room. It was interesting to me because my father also used to sing it to me and my sister when we were children because, “when you’re a parent, you’re looking for, you know, the things to pass down and it was one of my favorite songs as a child.” The tune of the song makes it seem fun and harmless, but there is a dark undertone about the lyrics that I recognized, even when I was growing up. Looking at it now, I think it is less of a moral lesson, and more of a lesson to children about the random, horrible things that can happen to you when you are not expecting them. None of the events that take place are really the narrator’s fault (other than being chased by a dog after he hits it with a stick), and yet the narrator still ends up lost and alone. It is a dark reflection on everyday life hiding within a song for children, as is often the case with old songs and stories created for children.