Folk Groups

While reading the text I realized that there are a lot more categories of folk groups then I thought. If I had wrote this without reading the text I would have said I belong to only one folk group. I was under the impression that folk groups were only categorized by your nationality.

Now I realize I am part of several folk groups. The three I relate to the most are: the female folk group, the swim instructor folk group, and the Mexican folk group.

I belong to the female folk group, and know lingo that only people from this group know. For instance I told my boyfriend once that I needed to buy new camis, and he had no idea what I was talking about. If he was part of the female folk group he would know that a cami is a camisole, also know as a spaghetti strap shirt.

I spend most of my time at the Freedom Center teaching children from the ages of three to fifteen how to swim, and am part of their swim instructor folk group. Once we get a funny story we tell it over and over again. This might be disgusting, but a lot of our stories are about instructors making children vomit in the pool. Children throwing up is just a fact of life. Parents think it is a good idea to feed their children cool aid and corn dogs before swimming lessons. There is one instructor, Debbie, who always pushes the children to learn, and makes them throw up. She always tells the story of when she made this child puke and the vomit circulated in the water like a tornado. Instead of cleaning it up immediately the lifeguards just stared at it. It spun for a few minutes before they cleaned it up. I hear this story every time we get a new instructor.

The folk group I relate to the most is the Mexican/American folk group. I grew up thinking that everyone in America ate tortillas, eggs, pinto beans, and hash browns for breakfast. Most of my traditions regarding food come from my grandmother who was half Mexican and raised by her mother. My great grandmother immigrated to Texas from Mexico. She brought with her traditional ways to cook, and sew beautifully. I feel like my grandmother game me my most important and cherished folk identity.