Tag Archives: MRE

Charms

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Title: Charms

General Information about Item:

Customary Folklore: Superstition

Language – English

Country of origin – America

Informant Data:

Brandon Henthrone is 27 years old and from Southern Missouri. He currently lives in South Carolina. His military experience started when he was 18 years old when he joined the Navy Seals. He became a Coremen in the navy after that and has been doing combat medicine since then. He had one combat deployment in the middle east.

Contextual Data:

This superstition was presented in the line of duty to Brandon.  He was kicked out of a vehicle for consuming these charms, and he was informed by the person that kicked him out that the charms were known to be dangerous.  This superstition also involves a fear of getting killed in combat, which is a common theme among military superstitions.

Item:

Charms: Consuming charms candy that can be found in an MRE(Meal Ready-to-Eat) is believed to put you and those around you in danger.

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

Transcript of Associated File:

Brandon: Every combat vet knows, charms, charms are bad juju man. Charms get you blown up. Charms get you shot. Charms are the worst things ever. If you come in contact with charms, anything, throw it away, get it as far away from you as possible. I legitimately…so when I heard about it, I just got to division, I was this E3, didn’t know anything, I was out in the field, and they were like, you know, I had just opened up an MRE(Meal Ready-to-Eat), legitimately it had the charms candies in it; I was like, “ah dude these things are awesome.” One of the sergeants literally Spartan kicked me out of the truck because he was like, “you do not know how bad those things are for anybody”. What made it worse, what truly made me believe in them being very superstitious and very bad was the fact that on our trip back, we had 3 maybe 4 trucks break down out of the 8 trucks that we had. All of the trucks were perfectly PM’d, everything was great, but it came down to it, and they were like it’s the f**king charms. They were like doc you f**ked everything up so that’s why I say charms are the devil, and that is probably the only superstition that I truly believe in. Probably really the only one that me personally have heard of. I’ve only experienced what the Marines have experienced, and charms is, to me, the only one that’s out there.

Cole: What is like a charm physically?

Brandon: So charms…have you ever had a Blow Pop?

Cole: Yeah

Brandon: So that is made by the company…if you look on a Blow Pop, it says charms, but inside an MRE, there is these little jelly candies, they don’t put them in there any more, but back in the day they used to. They were little red, yellow, purple candies, and they tasted really good, they really did but they brought bad juju to you. So I did my best to stay away.

Informant’s Comments:

He says this is the only true superstition he believes in because he witnessed the superstition working first-hand.

Collector’s Comments:

This is another example of a superstition that results in the threat of being killed.

Collector’s Name: 

Matt Girouard

Tags/Keywords:

Charms, Superstition, Military, MRE, Meal Ready-to-Eat

Good Luck Charms

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Title: Good Luck Charms

Informant info: Matt Menezes. Informant attends Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH as a United States Army Veteran (2004-2013) . Informant was a member of the 82nd Airborne Division and deployed twice to Afghanistan (2007-08, 2008-09) as well as spent two years as a drill sergeant for basic combat training (2011-13).

Type of lore: Customary/Verbal Folklore, Superstition, Myth

Language: English

Country of Origin: USA

Social / Cultural Context: Informant was interviewed at Dartmouth College. Informant was asked about good luck charms during their time in the military. Informant discussed how in their MRE (food rations) there were pieces of candy called “charms” that nobody ate because they were considered bad luck.

Associated file:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/11vv5a27kzlycgq/Dartmouth_Folklore_Collections_Matt_Menezes.mp4?dl=0

Transcript:

Item: [I have recorded the item exactly how it was told to me in the interview]:I wouldn’t say there are good luck charms; I would say that there are a lot more bad luck charms. I was a paratrooper so I used to jump out of airplanes all the time and something you never tell anyone when they are about to jump is good luck. It is just one of those things that whenever it is said somebody gets hurt. One of the other things is one of the pieces of candy that comes in your MRE or field rations are called “charms,” but you’re not supposed to eat those because it’s really bad luck. One of the other things is there is something called the rain turtle. So what you do is, because I was and infantryman and we were always outside, is the rain turtle is somebody draws a turtle on the ground and if you urinate on the turtle it’s supposed to summon the rain gods and have it torrentially downpour.

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.

Collector’s comments: Another one of the veterans we interviewed from a different part of the military also followed the rule about not eating the “charms”