Folk Groups

After reading the chapter on folk groups I realized I belonged to a ridiculous number of them--all of the 6 main American folk groups. Although I think this is fairly typical since most people have an occupation, family, ethnicity etc. On with the groupings!

I work at a Civil War battlefield that is infested with employee ghost stories about tables suddenly flipping over for no reason and hearing thundering hooves when there were no horses around. There is also the lingo of my job (print me an X, where is the top half of the Z?, can you get me the back up bag--I'm out of IA and Mana passes) as well as an intense hatred for our ancient, used-to-be-fast food register which we call the Datasym. We hatch grandiose plans of eradicating the register that carry on and become completely ridiculous with each successive employee

As for my age group, we have a ridiculous repertoire of internet phrases, jokes, acronyms, etc: LOL, IMHO, IDK, FML and so on. These are becoming more well known, but a few years ago I could chat speak and my parents would have no idea what I was saying. There are also traditions in college such as how long to wait for a professor before you deem the class cancelled.

My family has so many stories it would take up a novel to write them all down (this could be because I have 11 first cousins alone not including their spouses, second cousins and further down the chain become to numerous to count). Most of out stories come from childhood and cooking traditions (which we are not allowed to ever, ever share with outsiders under penalty of exile).

I think the regional group is perhaps the loudest of the lore. Phrases like "You know you're from Northern Virginia when..." as well as the opinion that NoVa should cede from VA as we are completely different from say, Roanoke or Norfolk. How serious these beliefs may be varies, but I've heard the idea often enough.

My nationality and religion plays a huge part in my last name...my whole name really. Way back when an Welshman with the last name Francis fell in love with a pretty Irish girl. At this time (and still somewhat to this day) the Welsh and the Irish hated each other--modern day Capulet vs. Montague. This Welshman was very clever and decided to add an "O" to the beginning of his last name so as to appear Irish despite the very Welsh "Francis". We were now the O'Francis's. However, being Irish, we were also Catholic and being Irish Catholics we were ragining alcoholics. America did not want drunk Irish Catholics so BAM we dropped the "O" and became Francis again. Now we were just drunk Welsh Catholics (this is clearly much better). We are no longer Catholic--that died with my granddad as did just how true the tale of our last name is.