Two weeks ago, I had an assignment given from my sociology professor. He handed us a prompt that said, "We often don’t notice how folkways are a part of our everyday life. Think about which folkways are used on a daily basis between interactions of students on campus. In two separate interactions break one of these folkways and then answer the following questions in a brief essay." Now to many of you who have not taken a Sociology class that probably meant nothing to you. Allow me to explain. A folkway is a cultural rule set up by society, in other words it is a social norm. So our assignment was to break a social norm in two different circumstances or chose two social norms to break. Some examples our teacher gave us were " picking nose while talking with someone face-to-face, striking up a conversation with someone in the next stall of the bathroom, speaking with mouth open in a face-to-face conversation, talking loud on cell phone in quite places (library, class etc.)." This project lit a fire in me. I was determined to go outside my comfort zone and break a "law."
Well backtracking a bit, last semester, my roommate and I were at Walmart's dollar section. We perused the items on display and something caught my roommate's eye. Flarp. Flarp is a puddy that when squeezed within its container makes a noise that resembles flatulence. We were immediately awed with the awesome power and allure that Flarp had. Needless to say she ended up buying it.
Now fast-forward to two weeks ago. As I was brainstorming ideas for breaking a norm, it hit me. Flarp was my answer. I would use the Flarp to imitate me farting and get a reaction from a crowd. The folkway I was breaking is that it is socially unacceptable to fart in public. The first time I used the power of the Flarp, was at FHE. We (our apartment and our guy's apartment) were playing cards in the Bednar building (commonly, but unmistakeably referred to as the BYU-I Center). I hid the puddy within my sweatshirt pocket so it would allow easy access to it, and it would disguise it so I wouldn't get caught. Anyway, I was sandwiched between two of my FHE brothers. I felt that this was the opportune moment to "let loose" so I did. Lance, was the first one to react. He looked at me, shook his head (disregarding the fact that it could have been me) and blamed it on his roommate, Dillon. Dillon was repulsed from the accusation and then accused Lance of "cutting the cheese." An argument ensued until one of my roommates begged me to explain the situation. I did and we all laughed. The boys wanted to play with Flarp afterwards.
The second situation I wrote about occurred last semester when me and my roommate strolled the apartment complex "spider barking." We got lots of laugh and giggles. One couple stood out in particular. On the way back to our apartment, there was a guy and girl standing by the entrance. I decided to "pass gas" in front of them. The guy laughed uncomfortably but his facial features seemed forgiving. His "girlfriend" or what not gave me the most disgusted look on her face and gave me a deep intense glare. She did not laugh at all. She apparently was unamused by me breaking the social norm, and in fact probably thought I was unhealthy and disgusting. My roommate and I ran home laughing.
What I learned from this experiment is that I would much rather be abiding by society's unwritten laws than be breaking them. Breaking folkways tends to make things awkward for both parties involved. However, I did like this assignment and would like to implement Folkway Fridays were everyone should break a Folkway on Friday...
I'm so glad to be done with this post. I was beginning to run out of fancy terms for farting. Til next time, May the Flarp be with you.
