Tag Archives: Superstition

Don’t Put Your Purse On the Floor

Nationality: American
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Georgia
Performance Date: 04/25/2021
Primary Language: English

Context

This proverb is collected during a conversation I had with a friend when she came over for dinner at my house.

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Performance

The following is a proverb told to me by the interviewee.

I: Don’t put your purse on the floor or you’ll always be broke

M: Who told you this?

I: It’s just everyone in my family

M: Who did you hear it from?

I: I heard it from my mom who heard from her mother. It’s a superstition in the African American community and I think as time went on of course with the transatlantic slave trade it was mixed in with some European values and ended up being what it is now.

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Analysis

This proverb comes from the African-American community and is about a money superstition. The idea is that because people carry their money and cards inside their bags if you put the bag on the floor is showing disrespect and disregard for your money. For the interviewee, she sees this proverb as one that derives from Africa and is now a part of her heritage. What is interesting is that this belief or superstition can also be traced back to Ancient China with Feng Shui, and also to Turkey. Many different cultures have the view that the floor is associated with something dirty and low, and thus something precious like one’s wealth should not be in contact with it.

Don’t Sweep Over Someone’s Feet

Nationality: American
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Georgia
Performance Date: 04/25/2021
Primary Language: English

Context

This proverb is collected during a conversation I had with a friend when she came over for dinner at my house.

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Performance

The following is a proverb told to me by the interviewee.

I: Don’t sweep over someone’s feet or else they will go to jail

M: Who shared this proverb to you?

I: My mom and my dad. So I guess it’s from both Louisiana and Georgia. It’s a very much Southern African-American thing. I’m sure African-Americans from the west or east have never heard this saying.

M: That’s interesting I’ve never heard that one before.

I: Yeah I honestly hate telling white people this one, because then they’ll joke around and like sweep over my feet. And like why would you do that? I’m like a very superstitious person, just don’t.

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Analysis

What is interesting about this proverb is the latter half of it. I have heard from people that if you sweep over someone’s feet that you will have a bad love life, coming from the phrase “getting swept off your feet” as a way to say falling in love. It seems that this proverb takes that same concept but the latter half being about jail. As the interviewee comes from the African-American community in the South, where the incarceration rates for the African-American community are disproportionately higher than their white counterparts, it shows that the zeitgeist has made going to jail a part of their proverbs that they tell younger children. The interviewee also mentioned that this proverb tends not to be respected by her peers, showing that people’s level of superstition can vary even amongst similar age groups.

Main Piece: Tennis Court Lines

Nationality: American
Age: 53
Occupation: Family CEO
Residence: CO
Performance Date: 04/01/2021
Primary Language: English

Background: The informant grew up playing tennis every single day after school. She and her family members were professional players, and there was an expectation that everyone becomes an expert at the game through endless hours of training and tournaments. She played tennis in college and once she graduated, she coached players on the tour. She is very well respected in the tennis world. The rituals she performed as she was playing competitively never faltered. One of which was the belief that she could never step on the lines of the tennis course. This is a custom that is practiced by many players today because stepping on the lines is a sign of disrespect and bad luck. Player’s go out of their way to ensure that they never touch the white tape in between points.

Context: “As a tennis player, all of my life, I never stepped on the lines of a tennis court. If you watch tennis on TV today, I am in the majority. It was always something- it was something superstitious for many tennis players. It started with John McEnroe and I know that Roger Federer also does not step on the lines. Certainly, Rafael Nadal- I mean would pull a hamstring to step over the alley so he didn’t have to step on the lines… he’s psycho. Do you know what it was…it was more that it made the moments when you weren’t in the point and when you weren’t in the mindset of competition-it made when you didn’t have a lot of control in the point more bearable because the time in between points seemed like they were controllable, right.”

Thoughts: I think that this folk ritual and superstition signals that you respect the game and know the sport intimately enough to practice this custom. Moreover, as the informant explained, became a strategic, calming tactic as well. Having the power to deliberately step over the line and make a decision on the outcome of your movements gives the player a sense of control and is grounding when in such a high-intensity state. The folk tradition has many beneficial implications and has become more popular as more and more players step over the lines. It is interesting to watch how careful some players are never to touch the white lines, and now that I understand this ritual, it is so obvious when watching a game. 

Break your Mom’s Back

Nationality: Vietnamese-American
Age: 10
Occupation: Elementary School Student
Residence: Iowa
Performance Date: 5/1/2021
Primary Language: English

Main Piece:

B: People would say, “if you step on that crack then you’ll break your mom’s back.” 

Me: Who did you learn that from?

B: A classmate. One time we were walking out to recess and there’s like a crack in the concrete. And so he told me (laughing) that if you step on that crack then you’ll break your mom’s back. And then I just stepped on the crack (laughs). And then I was like- “are you sure about that,” (laughs). 

Me: You did it on purpose?

B: Yeah because I didn’t believe them, cause it was fake. So then I was like “what are you gonna do about it” (laughing). 

Me: Did other kids believe it?

B: No.

Background: 

My informant is my cousin’s 10-year-old son, who is in the fourth grade. He lives in a suburban neighborhood near Des Moines, which is the capital of Iowa. He goes to a public elementary school in his district, where he first heard this superstition in first grade. He finds this superstition silly as if it could never be believable. He laughs often in this telling, showing that this superstition is rather a funny story to him.

Context:

This is a transcript of our conversation over the phone. Lately, he has been telling me stories about what goes on during school, though this conversation was prompted specifically for this collection project. He brought this up on his own.

Thoughts:

This superstition was something that I also heard in elementary school. I similarly went to a public school, not too far away from his in the capital (Des Moines). When I was told this, it was also in a playful manner as his re-telling of the superstition suggests. It’s interesting that children find humor in a superstition that sounds rather brutal; a situation where you could be the cause of a potentially debilitating and painful injury to your mother. This act of poking fun at a brutal hypothetical then points to how children often find humor in being anti-hegemonic, where the mother in the situation is the authoritative figure in a child’s life. How a child reacts and perceives this superstition, whether it be humorous like my informant, or fearful, can speak to how a child views the authority of their parent. 

Owl: Sign of Bad Luck

Nationality: Vietnamese-American
Age: 49
Occupation: Nail Technician
Residence: Iowa
Performance Date: 5/2/2021
Primary Language: Vietnamese
Language: English

Main Piece:

A: Bà cố nói là cái con đô không đem lại lucky. I don’t know the whole story, but bà cố said if they go on your house, you will have bad luck everything.

  • “My great-grandma said that owls don’t bring luck. I don’t know the whole story, but she said if they go on your house, you will have bad luck everything.”

Me: Everything?

A: Yeah like money, family… will not be happy. 

Me: When did she first tell you that?

A: Mommy thấy ở chên cái nóc nhà hồi xưa. 

  • “When I saw it on top of the roof back then.”

Me: Then she told you that?

A: Yeah.

Me: What do you do then? After you see one?

A: Đuổi nó đi. And pray that nothing bad will happen.

  • “Shoo it away. And pray that nothing bad will happen.”

Me: Have you ever seen anything happen? Bad luck after seeing an owl?

A: Yeah I saw it. Cái chuyện đó không biết là đúng hay không, mà bà cố bị bịnh, bà cố– like 

great-grandma– bà cố của mommy–  bà bị bịnh. Xong rồi when con chim, nó tới, đậu trên nóc nhà nó kêu, rồi sau đó là bà cố chết. 

  • “Yeah I saw it. I don’t know if this story is right or not, but my great-grandma was sick, she– like great-grandma– my great-grandma– she was sick. Then when the owl, it came, perched on the roof and hooted, then after that my great-grandma died.”

Me: How soon?

A: Not long after.

Background:

My mother is the one telling me this story. The day before, an owl was perched on a tree in our backyard while she was away at work. My dad was the one to see the owl and gathered my sibling and me outside to look at it, hoot back at it, and take pictures of it. He then told us not to tell my mom, who believes the owl is a sign of bad luck. In Vietnamese culture, seeing or hearing an owl is believed to be an omen that death is coming. My mother worries that this superstition is true, as she feels her great-grandmother’s death was connected to the sighting of the owl in some way. She warned me to shoo the owl away if I see it again.

Context:

This is a transcript of our live conversation. My mother was in the process of making dinner (which was phở: Vietnamese rice noodle dish in beef broth) when I asked her about this story, being reminded of our visit from the owl the day before. 

Thoughts:

This was the first time I’d heard from either of my parents that an owl was a sign of bad luck, or that it is an omen of death. My mother is the person in our family with the most knowledge of superstitions, and the one who holds the most belief in them. Folk belief is contextual, not all-or-nothing, and not stagnant, thus, if my mother never had the personal experience of an owl visit being close to her great-grandmother’s death, she may not believe in this sign as much. Such is the case for my father, who rarely believes in superstitions. Thus, when he told us about the owl, he wasn’t fearful, and encouraged playful behavior when teasing the owl. However, the tone changed slightly when he shared an anecdote that he also saw a connection between an owl’s visit and the death of one of his neighbors when he lived in Vietnam. Being a paranoid person, a part of me is a bit fearful of the potential veracity of this story. However, I was reminded of how I’d heard this owl’s coo many times before knowing about the superstitions around owl visits, and nothing of bad luck had occurred then, influencing my belief in this superstition.