I'm going to start off by admitting at only a few weeks in, this class is by far the most, entertaining, interesting and funnest class that I've attended since stepping on a college campus. I've learned so much already about the origins and real facts of where the things we take the time out to listen to everyday actually came from and how it started to even the smallest details of body language or what certain gestures portrayed.
what I've cherished the most since reading it is "playing the dozens"; two or more people going at each other with insults that result in tension being increased and sometimes people getting seriously offended. The reason this stood out so much to me, is because as a kid i couldn't tell you how many times i had gotten into it with another child, about "your mama" jokes and more. I know people who took these jokes to heart, got suspended from school, and even expelled all due to "playing the dozens".
If you would've told us that there was actually a name for what we were doing other than "joking" i wouldn't have believed you, simply because it was something that we naturally did with no training. To learn that this was something that was considered to "make a boy into a man" or that crowds of people would gather around to listen to this had me completely shocked; not so much of the fact that it existed but the fact that I've never heard of it before entering college. Today "Playing the Dozens can be seen and heard almost anywhere at any time, and there is even a television show on MTV called "Yo Mama".
