Tag Archives: story

WATAHOTAHO

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: St. Louis, Missouri
Performance Date: April 2012
Primary Language: English

WATAHOTAHO

Camp shwayder

Item: A story from camp, called WATAHOTAHO

 

Transcribed from our interview:

My informant’s explanation:

“First day of every camp session,  which is in the mountains, they take everybody to this like opening in the mountains, yeah I’m not going to remember this well but, they oh I know I remember now, there was randomly in this mountains there was a stack of rocks that was unexplainable, not from an avalanche, either some natural thing or man made, it was kind of weird. It looked like a cave with some weird rocks out fornt. This camp direct has this big walking stick and he goes up there with all the campers and every time he tells this story on Watahotaho.

 

It is a story of an Indian tribe in which there was a chief and there are three sons and one is hunting, one grows things,a nd one herds, idk, but they get ina  huge fight and they all go and their land used to be very beautiful and when they got in a fight they all left and they didn’t do well making tribes, and their old tribe didn’t do well. So chief tried to have them come back, he turns to each one and tells them they need to work together.  The cave was where it all happened. You all yell watahotaho together because the spirit is still around, and the legend is that if everybody says it in unison, you can hear a spirit calling back. They send some counselor away, and they do a delayed echo so it sounds like a sprit is calling back.

Little kids really bought into it, so it was funny by the time I was older. Every year you come he changes his story a little bit, so you realize how stupid it is. “

 

What it meant to my informant: “Well it was a good way to entertain these kids, to get them introduced to camp and get them to interact with eachother. The shouting thing was just sort of fun. I would just run around camp and to make fun of it I would just yell watahotaho because I thought it was so stupid, but the kids loved it.”

There are several key elements to this tradition, like when this happens and the interactive portion of the story. The story’s theme is teamwork and community, and since this is the first day of a summer camp for kids, this encourages the children to be more outgoing and embrace each other as a community. The interactive portion supports this, forcing the kids to work together. Moreover, by yelling WATAHOTAHO, the kids are almost performing enactive speech, their shouts in unison symbolizing the bonds they create. My informant said it was most effective for smaller children, which makes sense: they are most gullible, so the counselor’s trickery would be more effective. Regardless, Justin Elliot grasped the “silliness” of the word, which is also effective for small children; letting young children speak in a different language at the top of their lungs is exciting and liberating for them, especially because they are normally a disempowered community that must follow rules like maintain “inside voices.” Thus, immediately the campers are introduced to a new community and set of rules that sets the tone for the rest of their stay at the camp.

Stealing Ham Urban Legend

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: New Jersey
Performance Date: 04/24/12
Primary Language: English

Transcribed Text:

“My friend told me this story. He said his friend was working at this grocery store, and this very large, borderline obese African American woman is walking towards the exit, and her body seems especially lumpy? More so than it would be for a normal obese woman. And all of a sudden, out of her shirt, on to the ground, falls a ham. A big ol’ ham, like you’d have for Christmas dinner. And – and she looks around, and she goes “who threw that at me?” (said in a very sassy voice). And- and it was very obvious that it had just fallen out of her shirt, but she proceeds to play it off like someone just threw a ham at her. And she reacts, and I guess this would supposedly be an appropriate reaction for having a ham thrown at you, by saying “nuh uh. Ya bettta don’t” (said in a very sassy voice with left hand on hip and right hand waving with the index finger. Head bobbing right and left while phrase is said). And, and then she just walks out. And the ham is on the floor and the employees were just standing there, mouth agape”

The informant currently attends the University of Southern California as a student. He says that he heard this story from a friend in high school in New Jersey. It has become a friend of a friend story, and he has told many of his friends the story several times. He normally tells the story after he uses the phrase “nuh uh. Ya betta don’t” in some conversation, and the people who do not know the context of that phrase ask him about it. I first saw him use it when it came up in a conversation on facebook where somebody refused to go look for their wallet to pay for a ticket that was going to be sold out within a few hours. The informant replied to that comment with “Sarah just tried to pull the same shit. Nuh uh. Ya betta don’t” to which he received many questions as to what that meant. Ever since then, he has repeated the story many times, each time receiving laughter regardless of if the audience has heard it before or not.

It is obvious by the way the informant tells the story that he is an active bearer of this now legend. Every time he repeats the story, there are fixed phrases and beats to the narrative. He makes use of the oral formulaic theory also with the final phrase where he imitates the woman. The audience, regardless of if they themselves repeat the story or not, the phrase “nuh uh. Ya betta don’t” has become a phrase that many people have started repeating and using within this group of friends at least. This story is a very amusing narrative, but it is also a bit racist. When the informant was describing how to properly say the phrase, he said that one has to do it with a proper ghetto accent and sass. This plays on the stereotype of African Americans that exists in the USA today, where it is normal and almost expected of the group to talk with a certain accent. This piece of folklore is an urban legend that makes use of the oral formulaic theory in the method that it is performed and Blason Populaire with the content that it contains.

 

 

 

 

UFO Sighting

Performance Date: April 2007

Both my mother and sister claim to have witnessed a UFO several years ago while driving home from a Target store which is only about a mile from my house in Marietta, Georgia.  It was late and dark outside.  Through the front window, my mother saw a pair of white lights approaching the intersection outside of the Target.  She recalled that the object, which she definitely believed was a craft, was extremely low in the sky – she said maybe the height of a telephone pole.  She could make out a boomerang shape as it moved overhead, where to her amazement, it hovered in absolute silence.
While my mother will admit being uncertain as to the craft’s identity, she suggested that it was some form of secret military technology; in particular she indicated that the craft she saw resembled the stealth fighter she had seen in photographs.  This is one popular interpretation of unidentified flying objects, and it is a viable explanation for many such sightings, perhaps including this one.  Together with this idea of futuristic military (human) technology, it seems the idea of super-advanced alien technology forms the overwhelming majority of the public sentiment on the subject of UFO’s throughout the US and most of the free world.  Though many UFO witnesses (and many who hear second hand) ascribe a spiritual nature to their experience, these interpretations and others are far outnumbered by those that focus on the future and progress of the human race.  While my mother does not believe in aliens and simply gave an honest account of what she witnessed, people of other cultures would probably have provided vastly different explanations.

Orphan gets run over by train

Nationality: Chinese
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: 920 W. 37th Place Suite 3301C
Performance Date: 31 Oct. 11
Primary Language: English
Language: Chinese

Orphan gets run over by a train

In Melbourne, there was this orphanage. I’m not exactly sure how it happened, but the orphanage burned a while back and was finally replaced by a school – like, a boarding school – not too long ago. Apparently, there are these umm…(positions arms perpendicular to each other)… railroad tracks nearby, and an orphan went over to the railroads and was run over by a train. The way the story goes you can see hand prints on the windows when the train passes by on foggy nights. It’s probably the first thing the train…you know…the first point of impact or something like that.

My roommate, E. F.,  heard the story from another friend, who was inspired to share after hearing a similar story on the local news, only a few nights ago. Right away, various elements of this story identify it as a legend. The setting, for one, is the capitol of Australia, a geographically distant but nonetheless real location. The events, for another, comprise the untimely death of an unnamed child and his/her haunting the location, which, although a known motif within ghost stories, present obvious challenges to belief as well as common thought – even for an individual who comes from an East Asian culture in which ghost stories are far more prevalent than here, in the US.

Despite the absence of any discernible proof and his usually pragmatic demeanor, E. F. didn’t altogether reject the possibility of the story’s events. He said he didn’t know any others but later mentioned that “at home [i.e., Hong Kong], parents usually tell their kids stories like this to prevent them from doing anything stupid.” As such, my being elder (even if only by a 3 years) likely removed the value of telling the story which could explain the unimpressed tone and lackadaisical gesture E. F. used.

Unfortunately, I find it difficult to form alternative analytical suppositions without more details. However, lack in this regard also limits potential outcomes. Elders clearly aren’t the only people who tell the story, and children aren’t necessarily the only ones who hear it. Therefore, elements are bound to vary based on circumstances of each telling. Furthermore, the abstract nature of an metaphorical approach to analysis is desirable.

Shaggy Dog Story

Nationality: English
Age: 52
Occupation: Journalist
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/22/11
Primary Language: English

The informant is a caucasian female in her 50s. She was born and raised in England. She, and her three siblings, were raised as orthodox jews. After university, the informant moved to Northern California for graduate school. She later moved to Los Angeles, where she now resides. The informant trained in school as a biologist, but switched to journalism and now works for a large newspaper. She is divorced with one child.

The informant used to tell shaggy dog stories very often. Shaggy dog stories are really long jokes with a usually very disappointing punch line, which makes the audience groan. She used to tell them in grade school, especially with her two brothers. She would tell them among the family or among friends. The stories would usually be told while walking around or during free time. They used the stories to fill the time and amuse themselves during free time. The informant had more time to fill as there was not a television in her family and she and her brothers did not participate in more structured entertainments or activities, such as sports or clubs. She and her brothers would walk to school and back and around town and told these stories during the journeys to fill the time. And in every telling the details and exact structure of the story would change.

Shaggy Dog Story (transcribed as it was told):

This story is about a man and one day he goes to a pet store. He fancies buying a pet. And so he’s looking at the cats, looking at the dogs, and he’s looking at the birds and the rabbits and all the other animals in the pet store and then he sees this really weird little small furry thing. And so the little was about two inches, with round furry feet, you could barely see it because it was just a ball fur. And he went up to the store owner and says, “What’s this?” And the person says, “Oh. Oh, yeah though. Oh, yeah, you don’t see many of them. I call it a rarie.” And so he, um, said, “I’ll buy it. It’s only five pounds.” So he took it home with the rarie food, and was told he could feed it rarie food and scraps, meat or grain. It wasn’t a vegetarian. He fed it and he went to bed and he checked in on it the next morning in its cage and looked in and he went, “Huh.” It seemed to have grown. Really, it was like two inched across the night before and then it looked like it was three inches across now. So he thought, “odd”, put food in the bowl and the rarie ate it all up and started, like, running around the outside of the cage squeaking so he gave it more food and he ate up all that. And, next day he goes to check on the rarie, it’s five inches across. And so it goes until this rarie is pretty much filling the cage and he realizes he’s gonna have to get a larger one. So he goes and buys a larger cage and he puts the rarie in it and he buys a heck a lot of rarie food and um, you know, some loaves of bread and some other stuff, um. The cheap bread, you know, ’cause he figures, this could get expensive. As indeed turns out to be the case. Because every day that rarie has grown. Soon it’s outgrown that second cage and he has to get an even larger one. And then, a week later it’s outgrown the larger cage and he has to put it in the bath. And then, the rarie outgrows the bath. And he goes to the pet store and says, “What’s going on? This rarie is getting bigger and bigger?” And the man says, “Well, sir, I, if you look at the form that you signed when we bought the rarie, it says, you know, all responsibility is transferred to you upon the transaction. And I really can’t be answerable for your problems. But we’ve got some rarie food on twenty percent sale right now. So if you’d like to pick up a few more, uh, bags”. So the man says, “Alright, but how big is it gonna grow?”. He said, “Well don’t really know much about raries, sir. Never had one before”. So, he buys a whole bunch of rarie food and in fact has to borrow his friends pick-up truck and fill it all up. And he has to go into his savings. And he, brings it all back. He buys a huge old metal wash tub basin, for putting water in, because the rarie is so big by this time that he’s basically sort of had to, move the rarie to the yard. And, um, make a very large rarie house and, uh, put him in a big, big pen. The rarie keeps growing. Growing and growing and growing. And he keeps on buying more and more food. And enlarging the enclosure. He’s lucky because he lives in the, uh, semi-countryside and he has a big field so the enclosure, there’s plenty of room for it get larger. But, he’s get worried. I mean now he’s worked through his savings in one bank account. He’s picking up night work to subsidize his income, which is not very much. Uh, to pay for the rarie food and his, and he’s lucky because he lives in England because, you know, you get all the water you want you’re not paying by the metre like in this country. And, or else the water bills would have just started to become astronomical. But even so, he’s getting worried because the field is only so big and by now the rarie is the size of… You know those VW buses? Well if you put two of them end to end that’s about how big the rarie has grown. And so it goes on. And he’s become very fond of the rarie, he combs his fur, and the rarie nuzzles his hand, and licks his face with his big raspy tongue and, but, he doesn’t know what to do. And so it goes. Until the rarie’s now as long as three VW, uh, vans, end to end. And he realizes there’s nothing to be done. He’s gonna have to get rid of this rarie. He doesn’t know what to do. He’s been back to the pet store multiple times and the pet store owner has started ducking into the back room when he sees him coming. And his secretary, and his shop assistant always says something like, “Oh, oh, you just missed him. He’s running errands, sir”. Or, “Oh, no. I don’t know nothing about the rarie. Um, can’t help you. Try tomorrow.” And so one day. After a night of soul searching. A night of soul searching. And it’s all silent outside, except for a gentle “thrrrrrrr, thrrrrr, thrrrrrrrrr”. Which is the rarie snoring. He realizes that he can’t go on anymore and the rarie has got to go. And he doesn’t know what to do with the rarie. And so what he does, he goes buys, rents, one of those big, uh, trucks that are, you know big flat bed trucks. Really big one. And, uh, the next morning he wakes up, he puts a leash on the rarie, and he, he leads the rarie into the truck. He slams the door shut and he starts driving. He drives long and far. He lives right in the middle of the countryside, uh, probably about two hundred miles from the beach. And what he’s decided he’s gonna do is he’s gonna drive to the white cliffs of Dover and toss and rarie over the cliff. ‘Cause what else can he do? The rarie, he hopes, can swim. And he’s, his idea is that maybe once in the water, swimming around, the rarie would, will just be able to feed himself on fish and kelp and anyway he just doesn’t know what to do. The zoos are not interested. So, he drives and he drives and he drives and he drives. He stops at a little coffee shop. And gets himself a coffee. And a doughnut. He gets back in the truck and he drives some more. He has to stop, has to let the rarie out to do, do its business. He has to load the rarie back into the truck. He drives more and more and more and more and more. He stops for lunch. At a little place and has some egg and chips. And gets back in the car. Truck, sorry. And drives and drives and drives and drives. And at last, he, the windows open he smells the brine of the ocean on his nostrils. And he hears the crying seagulls and he know that his destination is close. And by now the lanes that he’s driving are pretty narrow and its extremely difficult to navigate this huge flat bed truck. But, and like he can hear, he can feel the rarie getting lurched around in the back as he turns the tight bends. He arrives at the top of a white chalk cliff. Finds a place where he can park. He goes round. He opens the back door. He puts the leash on the rarie, lures the rarie out. He says, “Look. Rarie. I’m so very sorry, I just don’t know what to do. I, I can’t afford to feed you. I don’t have any room for you anymore. I, I’ve love your company, but this is getting out of hand. I don’t where things are gonna go. I, I’m at my wits end. I can’t afford to spend all this money on rarie food and scraps. Even if I cut out the rarie food entirely and just fed you on wonder bread, or something. Number one, it wouldn’t be very nutritious for you and number two I can’t even afford that anymore. I’ve been cleaning out the super market bread sections.” And the rarie looks at him and says. First of all the rarie licks his face and nuzzles his shoulder. And he says, “I understand. I know there’s nothing else you can do. But I just want to say”. And the man looks, by now there are tears falling down his cheeks and he looks up at the rarie and he says, “What, what is it?” And the rarie says, “It’s a long way to Tipperary”.

Analysis: The “shaggy dog” story/joke type is built for repetition. It is the details of the story, rather than the plot itself, that make the story interesting and worth retelling. It is this aspect of the shaggy dog story that probably led to it being retold so many times among the informant and her siblings, while trying to fill the time. The punchline of this story, although not the most important aspect of the joke, relies on knowledge of geography in Ireland for its humor. That would restrict the humor of the joke to a certain geographic region, centered around the British Isles. This probably contributes to why the informant does not tell this story in the US. The humor in the joke’s structure probably would not be received as well in America either. The punch line is very important in American humor. British humor is not so dependent on the punch line for all of the comedic value of a joke.