Chapter two reflection

As mentioned in chapter two most people are affiliated with a folk group with work members. Well I feel this is true and my story is no different. My folk group is my wrestling team. We work with each other everyday for eight months and even after season is over were still hanging out with each other. As individuals our make up is so similar. We are so closely alike. Our wrestling team is like a huge family and in reality I see my wrestling family way more then I actually see my own family. We all hang out with each other everyday we got to parties together, we go and see each others families together, we spend weekends in hotel rooms cutting weight and wrestling eight months out of the year. We go out to eat with each other; we all go to the movies or bowling together. We will be walking around and people will say “well you must be a wrestler” and when we ask how do you know? The answer with either “you just look like a wrestler” or “you walk like a wrestler”, which must mean that we must all look alike and we must all walk alike. Outside of my primary folk group I have other smaller folk groups, some that I associate with still and some that I don’t associate with anymore. Other folk groups that I am involved with are of course my family, which is my parents, siblings, grandparent, aunts, uncles, and cousins. I am extremely close with my family. Other groups consist of my friend back in Michigan, that I try to remain close with, but tend to be difficult going to school so far away now. Also my friends back home just so happen to be former wrestling team members. These are the groups that I associate with and belong to. "This blog entry is my response to Chapter two reflection question".

1st Encounter Project "Joke"

Let me tell you a little background about where I heard this Joke from. On my Mom side of the family, my grandma created a family website. The entire family gets on the website several times a day. They post on the site pictures of the grandchildren and themselves. They also post comments about new thing in their family’s life, or just plain non-sense. Another thing is 95% of my family lives in Michigan and that is where I am from also. Well if you’re up to date on college football then you know that Michigan took a loss, which is considered the worst loss in college football history. The majority of my family is not considered Michigan fan, but fans of other Michigan team, or other States teams. Moving on, I have one uncle is a tremendous U of M fan (die hard), so on my family’s site everyone has been making fun of University of Michigan, by telling several jokes. My favorite joke of them all was the last one that my Uncle said that went like this, “How many batteries does it take to shock a Wolverine? 1-AA.” The meaning of the joke means it only took one double “A” football team to beat and shock the University of Michigan Wolverines. As far as I know this is a brand new joke. This is the first time I have ever heard this joke. But the heckling of a sports team is far from a new accurance. Heckling of ones favorite sports team is a tradition that has been practiced since the beginning of sports. Sports are meant to be very competitive, it’s the nature of the subject, so making fun of your rival team is typical and natural. Also competition in my family runs crazy. Every one of my mom’s sisters and brothers played high school sports and some of them played sports in college. My moms brothers still play on sports league, and now the siblings are always competing against each other, which is why this joke is so funny to me. On my family’s site my family just keeps going back and forth getting their digs on each other. "This blog entry is my response to the 1^st encounter project about a joke that is circulating in my life currently.

Chapter One Reflection Question

After a while of careful thinking, I came up with a conclusion of what my folklore consist of. I felt it was extremely fitting to talk about my wrestling folk life. I have been wrestling for the last sixteen years of my life, and currently wrestle varsity for the University of Indiana. Therefore my folklore takes place in the wrestling room. My community is made up of fellow wrestlers and athletes. Also in my community are coaches and wrestling junkies. Every where I go there always seems to be at least one other wrestler there. If I go to a party on campus, it is either a wrestling party, or I go to a party with a bunch of wrestlers. When I go to family reunions or party, wrestling is the topic at hand. Another part of my folklore is what I wear as a wrestler. During competition, I wear something that you don’t see in your everyday life. We wear different types of shoes, our outfits consist of a singlet, and we wear headgear on our heads. Also my eating habits are completely different from not only the rest of the community, but other athletes. As a wrestler we will go a couple days on a glass of water or two, while working out several times a day. We will go days without eating, and we aim to lose more weight then we naturally should. As a wrestler my everyday life is extremely different from the norm. I wake up at 5:30am and work out for an hour, go home and shower and get ready for classes. Go to classes all day, and then go to practice at 3:00pm. Then I leave the wrestling room around 6:00pm and get some dinner and do some homework. Then I go back into the wrestling room at 10:00pm and cut weight. After that I go home and go to bed, and get ready to do it all over again the next day. As you can tell I have my own folklore or way of life. This is the way I live, which is obviously way different from the average population. "This blog entry is my response to the reflection question to chapter one".