Tag Archives: teasing

Teasing hand gesture – Arabic Children’s Folk Gesture

Nationality: Palestinian
Age: 75
Occupation: Retired
Residence: Long Beach
Performance Date: 5/2/2021
Primary Language: Arabic
Language: English, French

Context:

She learned the hand motion in Egypt when she was around 5. You would do this gesture to another person when you want to tease them. Originally, when saying it, you would say “To’ ou moot” (“Explode and die”).

Gesture:

For the sake of my informant’s anonymity, I performed the gesture in the video.

Thoughts:

When I first saw the gesture, I thought it was playing on the English saying “Rubbing it in,” but then my informant translated the Arabic that accompanies the gesture. I found it hilarious that the speech and gesture have little to do with one another, but it could fall into the nonsense and taunting categories of children’s folklore (discussed by Jay Mechling in Chapter 5 of Elliot Oring’s Folk Groups and Folklore Genres: An Introduction).*

*Jay Mechling. “Children’s Folklore.” Folk Groups and Folklore Genres: An Introduction, edited by E. Oring, 91-120. Logan: Utah State University Press, 1986.

Burlap Jump Rope- Colombia

Nationality: Colombian
Age: 52
Occupation: Spanish Teacher
Residence: Davenport, FL
Performance Date: 4/4/2015
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: English

Informant (“M”) is a 52 year old woman from Bogota, Colombia. She moved to the United States in 1992, at the age of 30. She has two kids, a boy and a girl, who she raised in the United States. She has four siblings, two brothers and two sisters, she was the second born. She has a 102 year old Grandmother. Collection was over Skype.

Collector will be specified as “S”.

 

Transcript:

“M:  We had a game that, I don’t know como se dice en ingles, it’s with the rope. Rope?

S: Yeah, like a jump rope?

M: Yeah. We played at recess every single day when I was in third grade, yeah. I remember very specific.

S: What sort of rules did the game have?

M: The rules is that you jump, and when you jump if you get stuck in the rope, you are out.

S: Did they use two ropes or one rope, was there a song that you sang?

M: You only used one rope, there was one person on one side, and someone on another, and you was moving the rope around.

S: You didn’t sing anything?

M: We count, either the person that was in the middle had to count, even if it made them tired.

M: Yeah the person who can jump for the more long time would win. But sometimes we moved the rope very fast, it was one way we made the person lose, because there was no way the person in the middle could jump that fast. But Colombia we used a specific rope, not the plastics or synthetics. It’s made with wheat, what is the name of that plant, the thing that they make of those bags that they store coffee. Very famous in Colombia. Let me look….

(Uses search engine to find name)

M: Burlap, that used to hurt a lot when it hit your legs. YEAH, it was very painful. Burns and it gave you marks in the legs, because we had a school uniform, skirts, and they hit you in the legs.

S: Just one more question, was the person in the middle usually a girl or guy, or both?

M: Doesn’t matter boy or girl, it was a mix, a mixed game.“

 

Analysis:

The game seems like a very standard version of jump rope, similar to ‘Double-Dutch’ played in the United States. The use of Burlap was emphasized by  ‘M’ because of how painful it had made the game, resulting in pain when the jumper lost, possibility attaching an extra ‘cost’ to losing the game. The moving the rope ‘extra fast’ combined with the pain generated by the sort of rope may have acted as a form of teasing among students.

The use of burlap is very common in Colombia, notably used on coffee bags (as the speaker noted), which is a hallmark of Colombian identity.

“If you watch too much TV, your eyes will turn to squares”

Nationality: Colombian
Age: 52
Occupation: Spanish Teacher
Residence: Davenport, Florida
Performance Date: 4/26/2015
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: English

Informant (“M”) is a 52 year old woman from Bogota, Colombia. She moved to the United States in 1992, at the age of 30. She has two kids, a boy and a girl, who she raised in the United States. She has four siblings, two brothers and two sisters, she was the second born. She has a 102 year old Grandmother. Collection was over Skype.

 

Transcript:

“Me: You were saying something about ‘eyes turning into squares’…

M: Yes. When [son] would watch the television to much I would tell him to be careful or his eye would turn into squares.

(Makes impression of squares around eyes, with eyes turning from round into square)

Me: So it would happen slowly to him if he watched to much TV, not like ‘all of a sudden’?

M: Yes.

Me: Was it to stop him from watching to much TV?

M: No really (laughs), it was for fun, como el Mano Peludo. ”

 

Analysis: El ‘mano peludo’ is a myth involving a hairy hand that would attack children in their sleep, sometimes associated with children that misbehaved. In reference to M explaining that it was similar to el mano peludo, she is explaining that it is used by adults to often tease children, it is not necessarily tied to any sort of moral lesson.

In regards to the ‘eyes turning into squares’ piece of Folklore, there appears to be many references to it on the internet:

http://athome.readinghorizons.com/blog/why-sitting-too-close-to-the-television-makes-your-eyes-go-square

The Mystery of the Mad Science Teacher by Marty Chan, 2008, pg, 171.

https://sarahgalvin.wordpress.com/2014/08/10/dont-watch-too-much-tv-or-your-eyes-will-turn-square/

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/british/square-eyed

 

The myth itself appears to be addressed directly by many of the above authors as something heard during their childhood. This particular piece of Folklore thus appears to be used quite a lot in recent times, as the television as a fairly recent invention, this isn’t surprising. Though M did not use this particular piece of Folklore moralistically,  it appears to be quite available for such usage. Her use of it rather, may be closer to the use of the Boogeyman, a way to tease children via their trust in adults.

Don’t be such a nudge!

Nationality: American
Age: 22
Occupation: Software Developer
Residence: Madison, WI
Performance Date: April 24, 2014
Primary Language: English

The informant is a 22 year old college graduate that is now working at a software company in Madison, WI. He grew up in Upton, Massachusetts until he left Upton to go to college in Los Angeles, California. . Upton is a small (population 7,542) town about 45 minutes south-west of Boston. He grew up in a loosely Catholic household with both of his parents and two younger sisters (3 years younger and 7 years younger). His maternal grandmother alternated between living in Massachusetts and living in Florida throughout his childhood (and continues to do so now). She grew up in Massachusetts.

When the informant was a child, he often spent time with his maternal grandmother. He is not the oldest or the youngest of her grandchildren, but is outnumbered by girls 4 to 2 when he was growing up. When he was being obnoxious, his grandmother would call him a “nudge.” Though she was not malicious when saying this, the informant stated that she only said this when she was “trying not to be angry” at whatever small-child antics the informant was involved in. Though he cannot remember exactly when she started doing this, she only did so rarely.  She no longer seriously calls him this.

Though the informant has no children as of now, he sometimes teasingly calls his girlfriend a nudge when she asks for something that is particularly reminiscent of a child’s want, like a juice box or other similar rather un-adult food item like grilled cheese. I think his frame of mind is slightly different than when his grandmother was originally using the term, as he is rarely actually getting annoyed with the girlfriend when he calls her this. He does not call anyone but his girlfriend this, as it could come off as rude or strange to someone who does not know the story behind it.

Using somewhat silly names like nudge seem to diffuse tension. Small children, especially those with a somewhat stubborn streak like my informant, can be quite irritating to others and create tension within someone who is “supposed” to be nice and motherly towards a child, as a grandmother is. Using a silly but slightly negative name helps relieve this tension between having to be kind and being irritated out of one’s mind. This does not apply when the informant is using the term with his girlfriend. In that case, it is simply to tease her for wanting childish things by calling her a name that refers to a child.

Urdu childhood rhyme

Nationality: Pakistani-American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Torrance, CA
Performance Date: 3/28/14
Primary Language: English
Language: Urdu

Context: The informant is a college-age male whose parents are both from Pakistan originally. He was born and raised in the Los Angeles area. He currently lives in Southern California in a joint family and has also visited Pakistan multiple times since he was very young. His extended family in Pakistan includes many young uncles and cousins who are closer to his age than his parents’. The informant recalls his older cousins would say to him, jokingly, when he was in trouble,

“___ ke bacche

daal daal kacche”

which literally means “___’s child, uncooked lentils”. He elaborates that this was meant as a warning, to scare him into an apology for some misbehavior, because it was always said a precursor to someone “tattling” on him to a parent.

Analysis: The informant explains that it is a saying that everyone, including himself now, says to children younger than oneself. He says that he has never thought about the meaning, and only remembered and said it regularly when teasing his younger cousins because it gave him a sense of authority over them (since only people older than you would say it to you, usually) and because it rhymed, so “it was easy to say and easy to remember”. He continues, “It was just, like a fun, teasing thing to say to the little kids, like you would joke with them but you wouldn’t actually get them into trouble.” From his own words, the informant seems to have recast the saying, not as the veiled threat his older relatives would use against him, but as something to relate to younger kids with.

From a more objective perspective, lentils are one of the staples in many Pakistani diets (i would venture to say, in many South Asian diets too). Uncooked lentils, however, are not very useful. So the rhyme could be commenting on the “bad boy”‘s or “bad girl”‘s lack of worth–no one wants you if you’re going to misbehave. Also, it could be a veiled warning that you’re about to be “cooked” or put “in hot water” or “raked over the coals”–that is, punished. The significance of not referring to the child by [his own name], but by “the child of [his own name]”, could be a reference to the fact that South Asian cultures are patriarchal and patrilineal, so knowing who the father is, is very important. Calling a child his/her own father may be a veiled way of saying they have no father and are therefore the object of shame.