Text 3
Contributor: Megan Colleen Hillier
Informant: Kirstin Olson
Title: Receiving a Son
Semester/Year: Fall 2005
I had a mom’s night and my friend or whatever, the father—his name’s Sparky, or at least that’s what I call him. Uh—he was like “Oh yeah, I want you to be this kid’s mom” so I went over and I dressed up in this tank top that said MILF—Mom I’d Like to Booooooooop. And, uh, they came in and they were all dressed up in suits and ties and they looked really cute, but they had blindfolds on. And they sat down in front of me, and they were, like, talking and they had to tell us—um, we had to ask them questions. They had, like, a baby bottle, and it had vod—like, straight vodka in it. And we had to ask them questions, and it was like purposefully that they’d have to get wrong, like “what’s my name?” and obviously they had no idea, or “how old am I?” or “have you ever seen me naked”—things that they’re obviously gonna get wrong. And any time we wanted to, we would make them drink—if they got a question wrong, we’d make them drink too. So basically, we just had to make them get rid of the bottle. And also when they got questions wrong, they had to take off a piece of clothing. So they were down to, like, their ties and boxers…and drunk. AND then they serenaded us, well first they got their blindfolds taken off so they met their mom and then they serenaded us… and that was pretty much it.
Context: The context of this interview was another conversation between friends, held at 1:19am on Monday December 5, 2005 at 1314 North Jordan—the residence of the collector. . (It is also important to not that this centralization of the ritual around alcohol is only noted in a men’s fraternity ritual, but one must keep in mind that this sampling is only of three collections, and women from only two chapters on campus commented on their own rituals. I do not believe that it is fair, looking at the limited sample, to conclude anything about the involvement of alcohol in these rituals as it pertains to a difference of men’s and women’s chapters on the Indiana University Bloomington campus.)