Never Eat the Charms

Title: Never Eat the Charms

Informant info: Informant requested to remain anonymous. Informant attends Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH as a United States Army Veteran. Informant enlisted in the Army in 2005 and was a member of the Army Infantry 10th Mountain Division of Fort Drum, New York. Informant served in Iraq from 2006 to 2007. Informant is 28 years old.

Type of lore: Customary Folklore, Superstition, Contagious Magic

Language: English

Country of Origin: USA

Social / Cultural Context: Informant was interviewed at Dartmouth College. Informant was asked about certain superstitions or rituals that they had experienced during their time in the military. Informant explained that contained in their MREs (meals ready to eat) there are various different foods like dried sausages and peanut butter and crackers. There are also rainbow colored candies, however, you are not allowed to eat them. If you eat them it will bring very bad luck upon you like rain or getting hit by an IED (improvised explosion device).

Associated file: Informant requested to remain completely anonymous.

Transcript:  [I have recorded the item exactly how it was told to me in the interview]: So in the army you eat MREs. They’re like these… they come in these big heavy-duty plastic like round-like packages. And inside them are these like various dried and dehydrated, non-perishable foods that can survive the end of the world. Uh, they’ll have all kinds of things like these weird beef patties and raviolis and packets of cheese and peanut butter—peanut butter is like priceless—uh but one of the things in there is the charms. And you’re thinking like lucky charms but they’re just called charms. And they’re in like, they’re like these square rainbow colored candies um and I have no idea what they taste like because I have never eaten the charms. Um and uh you’re not supposed to eat the charms. You know they’re like the devils temptation. Have this sweet treat of wonderful goodness to make yourself feel better. But you can’t do it because it will rain terrible, terrible luck upon you. Like, uh, really bad weather. Or uh, you might go out on patrol and get hit by an IED, uh just all kinds of shit storms so just like don’t eat the charms. Everyone will freak out on you and say what are you doing? I’ve seen people get completely like dog piled for even like joking about eating the charms. They’re like lifesavers or jolly ranchers. They look more like jolly ranchers. But I wouldn’t know what they taste like because I’ve never eaten them. I mean I’ve eaten jolly ranchers just not charms because they’re evil.

Informant’s comments: During the informants response he commented on MREs which is an abbreviation of meals ready to eat. Informant told me that the following is a common superstition across all branches of the military. Informant also noted that they have witnessed people get punched and tackled for eating them.

Collector’s comments: Due to informants request to remain anonymous, I attempted to include various displays of emotions within the interview using parenthesis.

 

 

 

 

 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *