Item Detail
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"Watched Pot Never Boils"
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2/12/2017
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Provo, Utah, Student Housing Apartment
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Male
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California
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Seattle, Washington
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227
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Roommate
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White
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Mormon
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Often cooks with his fiancée.
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Jeff was cooking something in a pot on the stove. I was eating lunch at the table, and Jeff was out of the room for a moment. When he came back in the pot was boiling and he said while stirring it "A pot never boils when you watch it." We said it as a reaction to the pot boiling all of a sudden when he left the room. It was a bit situationally humorous how he said it based on his slight frustration that the pot only boiled once he left the room.
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Jeff and I are roommates living in BYU housing close to campus. BYU is an LDs (Mormon) university located in Provo, Utah. Jeff is graduated from BYU and I am currently attending. We didn't know each other before, but often chat when making or eating food in the kitchen. There are four of us in the apartment,\rbut only two of us were at home when the folklore was shared. Jeff is often cooking food in the kitchen with his fiancé, although this time he was alone. It was lunch time, and when he quoted the folk saying I recognized it as folklore.
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BYU-Brigham Young Universtiy. Privatle religious school (Moron) in Provo, Utah.
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Item: A few days after hearing Jeff repeat the folk-saying, I asked to record him saying it. I recorded it using an app on my smart phone. I also asked for his name and then a description of where he had heard the saying before and in what context.\r\r\r\r\r\r\r\r\r\r\rDavey Runnells\rMale\r25\rENGL 392 (American Folklore)\rWinter 2017\rProfessor Eliason \rBYU\r\rDavey: Ok what's your name? \rJeff: Jeff (pause) Whatcott\rDavey: And tell me about the boiling water phrase. \rJeff: So I've always grown up hearing if from my mother, that, "a watched pot never boils." She usually taught me how to cook and make food, so it always just came whenever I was just really impatient waiting for the pot to boil. \rDavey: Do you know where your Mom heard it? \rJeff: I'm guessing she heard it from her family because I know my grandma, her mom, says it a lot too.
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David
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Runnells
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Male
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25
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ENGL 392
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Eliason