Folk Groups?

Determining the folk groups to which I belong is surficially difficult for a few reasons. However, identifying folk groups that I have had connections with is much easier.

I don’t have any current ties to communal or geographically oriented folk groups since I am still a relatively new resident to northern Virginia. On the other hand, people such as me who spent their childhoods in Williamsburg tend to identify with a very rich reservoir of beliefs, mannerisms, and oral traditions. Admittedly, that may just be a fancy way of embellishing upon the vast amount of ghost stories, urban legends, and superstitions that a lot of Williamsburg residents slowly absorb. These pieces of folklore naturally originate from the colonial history of the area. The softly-spoken attitude of most residents that they somehow carry the responsibility to proudly represent the nation’s birthplace probably comes from the ease with which one slips between the dusty unpaved boulevard of the old governor’s mansion and more modern amenities such as a Baskin Robins a few blocks away.

I am between jobs though my occupational history and my largest hobbies keep me firmly seeped in the folklore of the IT, or information technology, industry. Techies, nerds, and even gamers draw from similar veins of language, jokes, and behavior that surround digital technologies. Anyone who has ever worked a “helpdesk” relishes the opportunity to share the “horrifying” stories that accrue from having to deal with tech laymen, or “users.” For example, everyone has had to deal with that one person who paged you to fix his or her computer even though the “problem” related to not having the terminal plugged into an electrical source. Although that is such a commonly heard anecdote, it never ceases to be retold due to the personal circumstance, or spin that occurs with each person’s experience. Would you believe that a NASA researcher with multiple PhDs did not realize that he needed to press the power button in order for his PC to turn back on after a complete shutdown?

Perhaps my own family doesn’t necessarily count as a folk group in a more obvious way such as cultural identification, but I like to think we qualify for no other reason other than for being our own storytellers. In retrospect, I would submit that the habit of constructing past events for retelling in the form of bona-fide “stories” is itself a strong tradition from my mother’s family tree although some of her relatives tended to blur the line between truth and fiction. As I try to justify the basic nature of my family’s “stories” as folk lore through reminiscing, I am encouraged to find that almost all of the most infamous stories carry inherent lessons or explanations for major shifts of our family’s behavior. For example, one will never find any of us drinking Gatorade due to one disastrous road trip to the beach involving a hot summer, and an old Oldsmobile with a broken AC unit. Consequently, I am confident that this particular story will be retold for many generations to come as a family fable warning against obstinacy and poor planning (or decision-making). I’ll save the part about the oyster and the hotel elevator as a punch line.