Title: Princeton Superstitions – Annie Kuehl
General Information about Item:
- Customary Lore, Sign Superstition, Magic Superstition
- Language: English
- Country of Origin: United States
- Informant: Annie Kuehl
- Date Collected: 11/10/21
Informant Data:
- Annie Kuehl is a female Princeton student in the class of 2024. She is from Edina, Minnesota and lived there her whole life. She is currently living in Princeton, NJ. At school Annie is on the Women’s Ice Hockey team and plans to pursue a career in business. She has 2 superstitions that she follows strictly before games.
Contextual Data:
- Cultural Context: The cultural context is being part of a team where other girls use white stick tape as well, which is a superstition passed down from team to team.
- Social Context: The social context is interacting with people who also tape their back-up sticks before games, along with getting caffeine.
- The magic substance in the superstition about taping her sticks is the white tape.
Item:
- This item is a customary type of folklore under the genre of magic superstition. Annie performs these before each home game.
Transcript:
- “If CVS is out of Celcius Green Tea Lemonade then I will go to Starbucks and get a Venti Iced Vanilla latte. I tape all 3 of my sticks with white tape before our team warm ups. ‘I once broke my stick and had to use my backup, which had the worst tape job of my life, so ever since then I’ve starting taping all 3,’”
Informant’s Comments:
- Annie mentioned that if she did not do these two things or if she only taped two sticks then she would play badly and not be able to communicate with the women she plays with. She also said she now tapes her backup sticks with her linemates in order to play well.
Collector’s Comments:
- I was very intrigued by Annie’s superstitions because she was the first person who mentioned a sign superstition. It was also interesting to hear about the reason she tapes all three of her sticks based on something that happened to her, but that how she started using white tape initially was because her idol on the team did before her.
Collector’s Name: Currie Putrah