Tag Archives: summer camp

Friendship Bracelets

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 4/4/12
Primary Language: English

The informant is a sophomore at the University of Southern California. She is twenty years old. She is also the Jr. Helenes chair for the USC Helenes, which means she works closely with the girls at 32nd Street School and other Helenes to create a mentoring system.

The informant let me interview her about a friendship bracelet making activity that took place between the Jr. Helenes and the USC Helenes:

“Some Helenes and Jr. Helenes were at our regular meeting place, at 32nd Street School. I taught them how to make the bracelets. It’s fun to teach other people to make the bracelets and it’s just a good way to bond. I don’t know why friendship bracelets are popular but they’re symbolic and meaningful. And simply making the bracelet together is a good bonding experience…For me, it’s my way of showing someone that they’re important to me—but it’s not like everyone who’s important to me has a bracelet; it just depends who I have that tradition with. I guess I also like the idea that other people can see them and ask who it’s from. With the Jr. Helenes, it’s nice to have a sort of bonding exercise so we can become really close. That way we’re more than mentors—we’re friends. I got started with friendship bracelets when I went on a month long trip to Hawaii during high school. We were making so many new friends, it was a good way to celebrate that, I guess. I ended the trip with like 7 bracelets. I also like giving them to people because they know I care about them. I like to let them choose the colors and have them hold on to the end while I make it so that it’s a process we’re doing together, and the finished product is something that will make them think of our friendship whenever they see it. I also am kind of superstitious, and I like to have them make a wish on the bracelet, because supposedly the wish comes true when the bracelet falls off.”

I agree with most of what the informant says about friendship bracelets. They are definitely symbolic of a friendship and a way to celebrate that relationship. She also made a good point about the process of making the bracelet serving as a time of bonding. What really struck me about my informant’s experience with friendship bracelets was the superstition tied to them. This was new to me, but it really adds another element to the bracelets, making them even more of a shared experience between two people.

Annotation:

Friendship bracelets can be found in the movie Napoleon Dynamite (2004). In this movie, one character goes door to door selling the bracelets and later, Napoleon and his friend Pedro hand them out when Pedro is running for class president. Instead of being made from thread, these bracelets are made from plastic.

Napoleon Dynamite. Dir. Jared Hess. Perf. Jon Heder, Efren Ramirez, and Jon Gries. Fox Searchlight, 2004. Film.

Legend – Beckett, Massachusetts

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Scarsdale, NY
Performance Date: April 11, 2008
Primary Language: English
Language: French

Legend—USA

“At Camp Greylock, a summer sleep-away camp in Beckett Massachusetts, counselors dressed up as clowns and terrorized boys in the middle of the night.”

David informed me that he first heard this legend when he was a counselor at Camp Greylock during the Summer of 2007.  He decided to build a campfire with his co-counselor and tell the kids in their bunk ghost stories,  Though most of the stories were fictional, his co-counselor did tell one extremely alarming tale, which he swore was true, or at least is believed to be true.  Apparently in the 70s (the camp was founded in 1916), a group of sick and twisted counselors decided that it would be funny to torture children.  They decided that the best way for them to this was to dress up in complete clown costumes; white faces, colored wigs—and scare 11 and 12-year-old boys.  After they put on the costumes, a bunch of them would go into a bunk and sit in the center of the main room, staring into space.  When one or more of the kids would wake up, they would be terrified as they would see a group of frightening clowns, not moving, just sitting on the floor staring off into space, or worse, at the children.

Though we will likely never know if this is a true story or not (the current owners of the camp say it’s false, but the events allegedly happened 2 or 3 owners before them).  Clowns must be a common fear amongst people, because I have heard several legends involving clowns.  The most notable is an urban legend that I heard while here at school in L.A.; apparently a girl is house sitting for her neighbors when she sees a statue of a clown and calls the owners of the house to ask about it.  They say that they don’t have a statue of a clown, and the idea is that some random guy dressed as a clown was terrorizing her.  Whether or not the two are somehow related—one somehow being a variation of the other, or one coming after the other, we will never know for sure.  This is why such urban legends are so fascinating, not only are we unsure as to whether or not it is true, but we also wonder what relationship it has to other legends.