“I don’t know exactly how it started, but we kind of came up with this unspoken rule that if you’re going to a concert, on the drive there, you don’t listen to the band that you’re going to see.”

The informant self identified this practice as a superstition, yet also attributed to its creation for other reasons. One of those is not wanting to listen to it before, so that when you arrive at the concert, you haven’t just heard the same songs multiple times. With it comes the idea that you will not enjoy the concert as much if you are tired of the songs before going. Another reason is that some bands are not necessarily that great live, so by not listening to their recorded songs beforehand, you will enjoy the live performance more without comparing it to what might actually sound better.

While this is something he started doing with just his close friends, he knows that other people have similar superstitions. If he is with people who were not part of the original friend group that created it, he does not force them to turn off the radio or unplug the aux cord, but he does mention it to them. He has found that it makes sense to most people and he practices it every time he goes to a concert if he can, while spreading the practice to others.

The informant relayed this to me while in the passenger seat of his girlfriend’s car as she drove us all back up to Los Angeles. I have known the informant since he moved to Los Angeles.

While I have never done this myself, I find that it actually does make a lot of sense. It is a superstition to preserve the quality and heighten the experience of a concert. If not followed, there is a chance that nothing negative will happen. However, there is always the chance that something will and your experience that you paid for (often a lot of money) will become less enjoyable.

“Don’t open an umbrella in the house.”

The informant was born in Atchinson, Kansas, but moved to California when she was seven, where she has lived ever since.

While the informant cannot remember a specific instance where she heard this saying, she explained that this was something that people would say over and over again. Essentially, part of her vocabulary growing up. She considers her generation to have been homebodies and that their sayings simply reflected the way people were living. To her, these sayings came from people who were doing more manual work, like farming and housekeeping, rather than office work. She herself never had a job, but fulfilled her goal of becoming a mother and homemaker.

She remembers being told that it would bring her bad luck if she did open an umbrella in the house, but she thinks that someone created it simply because they didn’t want someone to do it, potentially because it could break something, so they started telling people it was bad luck to do so. She claims that if you did though, you would just have general bad luck because the saying never specifies what exactly will happen to you.

The informant does admit to having opened an umbrella in the house at one point in her life, but she does not know if she had bad luck or not as a result. She thinks it is possible though because she does not know how things might have been different than they were/are. However, now, she says that you shouldn’t take any chances because you don’t know what bad luck will befall you if you do.

The informant relayed her folklore to me at my dining room table. I have known her my entire life as she is a close relative. I had already asked her about her folklore weeks before, but upon meeting on this day, she brought a list that she had written of all she could think of so that she would not forget when she told me. While she read the specific folklore off the sheet, the other details I got from her were not pre-determined.

I think there is a large possibility that the informant’s belief that it was created to scare people into not doing something they did not like is accurate. However, there is no real way of knowing for sure. She also brings up what I have found to be the key reason most people don’t test their superstitions. Even if you don’t necessarily believe it to be true, you don’t want to risk having bad luck by trying to find out if it is true or not.

“Since religion is a huge part of our family, one of the like lessons that my aunt, my dad’s sister, told my cousin was like, you know, always give to the homeless, which is super like prominent here in South Central LA. And like, my cousin always does it without fail whether she gives money or food or anything because she believes that the one person who she doesn’t give it to will be Jesus and then when she reaches the gates of Saint Peter, like, Jesus will be like, “Why didn’t you help me that one instance?”

For the informant’s cousin, she does it out of fear in a sense, but also because she sees it as helping preserve her faith and maintain that goodwill. For her, it is necessary and she adamantly sticks to it. It does not have to just be money either, but can be food, clothing, or anything as long as you are still helping them in some way. However, for the informant herself, it is not as necessary. She explained that during her religious holidays, she is more likely to give either food or money to the homeless, but does not do so with every one that she comes in contact with. She explained that because she goes to school in South Central Los Angeles, she would practically be giving away all of her money due to the large population of homeless people in the area. When she does give money to someone, she often does so when she strongly sympathizes with them, like when it is a mother trying to take care of her child, etc. In that case, she often gives what she has, even if they are asking for less.

The informant relayed this to me while we were sitting on a bench on the USC campus.

While not the first time I had heard this, I found her story unique. To me, it shows two variations of practice within the same religion. For the informant, location and personal preservation play a huge factor into how necessary she feels it to be. For her cousin, the idea of denying Jesus help is more terrifying than anything else because of the potential of being denied entrance at the gates of Saint Peter.

I often have heard that people do not give money to the homeless because they believe they will buy drugs or alcohol instead of using it for what they say, but neither the informant nor her cousin seemed to think in that way whatsoever. Some people may believe the woman the informant gave money to was lying, but she felt sympathy for her instead of doubt. Overall, I think their lack of doubt comes from their belief, especially for the informant’s cousin.