Half-Mind Rant

You’d think hashing, an essentially lawless and underground activity, with all the surprise, trickery, and cheating that goes into setting and running trails, would be the last place you’d encounter hide-bound rigidity. After all, Rule # 1 of hashing is – No Rules! But hashers are people, and people like what they are used to. And when it comes to the circle, in particular, hashers are resistant to change.

I’m on this rag because our Tucson jHavelina HHH circles have become too ritualized. I remember trails, because, thank G, they’re all different. But I can no longer remember much about the circles afterward, because they’re all the same.

How all the same? Well, the GM always follows the same order for down-downs: trail trial, virgins, visitors, returners, awards (which in turn always follow the same order: hash stud, hash shit, hash bitch, FRB, best dressed), violations, and announcements. Even though jHavelina hashers pride themselves on knowing a lot of hash songs, we’re getting to the point where the same song must be sung for particular down-downs, even though there are many other choices - we always sing “Where oh where were you last week” to returners; we always sing “S-H-I-T-T-Y T-R-A-I-L” to the hares; we always sing “We’re the jHavelina Hash, All the Others Suck” to visitors. When we call virgin hashers into the circle, we ask an experienced hasher to show them how to do a down-down first – the experienced hasher must always utter the word “head,” and the pack must always respond with the head chant. Always, always, always, and no deviations please!

Seriously, some jHavelinas get visibly uncomfortable when I sing a different song than the one they expected. And that’s not right! The joy of hashing is the unexpected, isn’t it?

Now please don’t mistake me – I love the hash and all my hashing friends and even the ritual of the circle. I just wish the ritual contained a little breathing space for spontaneity.

To be fair, I have to say that while hashers resist change, change they do, albeit slowly. When I first ran with the jHavelinas in 1994 or 95, no one knew more than two or three hash songs. Today every member of the pack can sing dozens – we know so many, in fact, it’s an automatic down-down if someone repeats one that’s already been sung. As for the circle, what we do today would be totally unrecognizable to a time-traveling hasher from the mid-90s. So yes, hashers change, but you won’t see it happening from week to week – year to year’s more like it.

It’s also peculiar that this resistance to change applies only to one’s home hash. jHavelina hashers routinely go hashing in Phoenix, Sierra Vista, El Paso, Las Vegas, and San Diego. They don’t go to strange hashes and complain because they don’t do things our way; on the contrary, they love the experience and they come home full of new ideas. And I do have to admit that, over time, some of those ideas work their way into the jHavelina way of doing things – especially if it’s the GM or RA who comes home from a hashing vacation with new ideas!

Similarly, jHavelina hashers run with other Tucson area hashes, all of which do things differently from each other and the jHavelinas, both on trail and in the circle, and they’re fine with the differences. Just not at the home hash, thank you very much!

So what’s the point of this diatribe? Loosen up, hashers, that’s all. Just loosen up.