White Socks

Title: White Socks

General Information about Item:

  • Genre and Sub Genre
    • Example: Customary Folklore: Superstition
  • English
  • United States

Informant Data:

  • Marcus is from Illinois and was born in 1989. He joined the military so he could pursue higher education in the future. He joined the Navy because he wanted to travel the world, and he initially thought of joining the air crew to fly from country to country. He instead decided to become a corpsman, went to corps school, went to CTM (combat trauma management), got deployed with the Marines, and went to Afghanistan for his first deployment. He worked at a hospital in Spain and currently resides there. He attended one semester of college before deciding to go to the military.

Contextual Data:

  • Social & Cultural Context: He first heard about this superstition in Afghanistan, and he understands it to be to make sure everyone in the military is doing their daily checks and keep everyone in line. The military wants everyone to pay attention to their surroundings, not neglect anything, wearing the right clothes and uniform regulations, and making sure one is aware of small details.

Item:

  • White socks – do not wear them or else one will be blown up

Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):

Transcript of Associated File:

  • “My superstition is the one where they tell you if you wear white socks, you’re going to get blown up because you’re not paying attention to your surroundings because instead of wearing black socks like you would in the rear, you’re wearing white socks because you’re not in the rear, you know. You can get away with it. So that’s the big superstition for me.”

Informant’s Comments:

  • The informant did not really believe the validity of this superstition, and he stated that it does not really matter what socks you are wearing out in the field or what kinds of clothing you’re wearing. He believes that everyone just does they’re best to make sure the person next to them gets home by staying disciplined. However, a lot of care packages that people send to the military contain white socks, and people just wear white socks more and this higher percentage of people wearing white socks is reflected in who gets hurt.

Collector’s Comments:

  • Many of the people we interviewed shared this same superstition, and we speculate that it is associated with a cautionary tale to just be careful, take care of oneself, and have good discipline in the military.

Collector’s Name: Jenna Shin

Tags/Keywords:

  • superstition, white socks

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