Alyssa BurdettFollow

Date Collected

Fall 11-23-2017

Place item was collected

Informant's home.

Informant

Danielle Jones

Point of Discovery/Informant Bio

My informant’s name is Danielle Jones and she currently resides in Saratoga Springs, UT. She grew up in Layton, UT and is now a stay-at-home mom. She has her high school diploma and has dabbled in higher education at cosmetology school, nursing school, and Western Governor’s University. During her free time she enjoys online shopping and watching Hallmark movies. My informant is also my older sister.

Context

This story was collected on Thanksgiving when I was visiting my sister’s home. While trying to determine if her stories were good enough to share, I didn’t record when she was telling me the stories. In hindsight, I should have. When the end of the night was drawing near, I’d asked her if I could record her telling them to me again and she asked, “Can I just email them to you?” So while I was in the room with her and her family, watching Christmas with the Kranks, my sister emailed me her stories. This story wouldn’t generally be told unless the situation called for it. For example, if somebody found a hair in their food, if they were eating rolls, if it was Thanksgiving, or if they were reminiscing about experiences with her mother-in-law. Her mother-in-law has since passed on, but if she were still around, this is the kind of story that would not be shared with her. The ironic thing is that while we were prepping for Thanksgiving, just minutes after she’d shared this story with me, we were eating the rolls that were fresh out of the oven and I noticed a long hair (I think it was mine…) on some of the rolls.

Text

It was Thanksgiving 2010, and we were driving to my mother in-law's to celebrate. I started to think about the good food that we would be enjoying, but debated whether or not to even bother trying to eat a roll. I finally explained to my husband as we drove, that I had had several experiences where I had had his mother's rolls and found a piece of her hair in it.

After we arrived, and assembled our plates of food, I left my plate for a minute to help my kids with one thing or another. I came back to start eating and saw a very convincing tiny pile of hair sitting on the top of my roll. I literally said out loud "You have got to be kidding me! What are the odds!?" My husband was busting a gut, and the rest of our family, including my mother in-law, all asked with great concern what was wrong. I brushed it off, and a few minutes later my husband discreetly admitted that he had pulled some hair from the head of our daughter's new Rapunzel doll to torment me. I'll admit, he got me good!

Texture

This story is often told with a tone of exasperation and a wide-eyed expression of disbelief at the sight of the doll hair on her roll. Her husband often has a mischievous look on his face when she tells the story because if given the opportunity, he would likely do it again because he thinks he’s clever. She also has a moment while telling the story where you can see how much the thought of hair in her food disgusts her.

Course

Introduction to Folklore, ENGL 2210

Instructor

Dr. Lynne McNeill

Semester and year

Fall 2017

Theme

G6: Pranks

EAD Number

9.3.2

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