Title: Push Your Shelf
General Information about Item:
- Verbal/Custom Lore, Joke
- Language: English
- Origin: Dartmouth College Athletic Teams
- Informant: Katie Pursley
- Date Collected: 10-20-18
Informant Data:
- Katie Pursley was born June 2, 1998 in Easton, MA. She is currently a junior at Dartmouth College, and is studying Economics while pursuing the pre-med track. She played softball, basketball and ran cross country throughout high school. She began playing rugby for Dartmouth College her freshman year as a walk on, and quit after her sophomore year.
Contextual Data:
- Cultural Context: The Dartmouth rugby team would offer words of enthusiasm and encouragement before team events such as lift, practices, and games. One of these team sayings was “Push yourself, push eachother.” Before practice last year, a teammate of Katie’s, Eva Klein mispronounced the team saying and said “Push your shelf.”
Social Context:The joke is performed when a member sees a shelf on campus, and is with fellow rugby teammates.
Item:
- This item is is a team custom and verbally performed joke, relating to the incident in which Eva Klein mispronounced a team saying prior to a team activity.
Collector’s Comments:
- The joke is exclusive to the women’s rugby team, and without the contextual data or prior knowledge, one may not be able to perform it. It allows the team to connect with one another and provides the team with a sense of identity. It also creates a paradox in which you would expect the initial instance to be done correctly, and when it isn’t it is remembered and passed down through this joke.
Collector’s Name: Sydney Hill
Tags/Keywords:
- Verbal Lore
- Customary Lore
- Joke
- Athletics
- Rugby
- Dartmouth
- Shelf