Supersilly

Writer's note: This ran in the Journal Tribune on Friday, March 13.  Let's pretend all the references to "today" still make sense, whatya say?  

 

And start column... NOW.

 

Profound thought for the day: Our stories and anecdotes, when strung together, comprise the narrative of our lives. I’ve been drinking my Deep Juice.

 

Every time the 13th falls on a Friday, I think of my father. He’s reached the age at which his anecdotes have been sorted and filed into various greatest hits, and one of his favorite tidbits to share is that he celebrated his 13th birthday on Friday the 13th. He may call me with this information today. Often, factoids like this expand with age, swelling into grandiose adventures replete with narrow escapes and heart-pounding derring do – the fodder of dime-novel swashbucklers. Not this one. The eerie coincidence is enough.

 

Dad’s a superstitious guy, so the lack of embellishment is surprising in a way. I still half-expect that interesting little seed to someday blossom into a yarn bursting with black cats, snake eyes, and a fate-altering trip through the underbelly of a ladder. How does that work, exactly? Is there a God of Superstition sitting somewhere in the clouds, harp sitting neglected beside a weathered XBox controller, just waiting for someone to walk through the wrong space? I picture a computer programmer with angel wings watching us all on an array of Batcave-like screens, finger hovering over the “ruin day” button.

 

No, Timmy, don’t step on that crack! Ian the God of Weird Beliefs is gonna break your mother’s back!

 

One thing we should establish right off the bat is that superstitions are complete bollocks. Not to be nerdy and invoke the name of science, but if there were any truth to these claims – like Friday the 13th being an unlucky day – there would have been evidence by now, some data to make the whole thing plausible. Planes would be dropping from the sky. A million souls would trip and fall on a million misplaced banana peels. Pauly Shore would land a starring role in a movie. Bedlam.

 

Only those things don’t happen. Someone somewhere is surely having a bad day, but someone somewhere is always having a bad day, regardless of the date. Heck, just two Sundays ago I was struck by a bout of sneezing that lasted longer than a flight to Europe; my only recourse was a box of Alka Seltzer and a pile of tissues so massive it could’ve collapsed the roof of an Army barracks. That was a bad day. And there wasn’t a black cat in sight.

 

Yet people still believe this stuff. There could be any number of reasons why. Perhaps they were still impressionable children when they were told, for example, that it’s bad luck to open an umbrella indoors; it’s tough to shake parental warnings, even as we age and leave childish things behind. Sadly, those who avoid opening umbrellas in a crowded train terminal are missing the priceless looks on peoples’ faces. Judging from their horror, you’d think you slaughtered a lamb in offering to the pagan god of soggy socks.

 

Since most major superstitions trace their origins to ancient civilizations, it’s tough to determine how they actually took root. One such belief is that it’s bad luck to spill salt; worse, it’s supposed to “let the devil in,” according to a website called Psychic Library. Now, the fact that the site is called “Psychic Library” may mean it’s worth taking this information with a grain of salt (zing!), but it doesn’t seem farfetched to suppose that people once ascribed satanic connotations to the spillage of this venerable steak-enhancer. 

 

I remember learning about this particular superstition from my grandmother. We were eating at a McDonald’s when I was about 6 or 7, and when I knocked the salt shaker on its side, she promptly instructed me to take a pinch and toss it over my left shoulder. This was supposed to “cure” the concomitant bad luck. At that age, I thought nothing of it; I inhabited a world in which pro wrestling was real, reindeer could fly, and bears could dance and sing showtunes. Now I recognize it as being a relic of antiquated times. The origin probably went something like this: “Hey Kush-Ta, check it out. I totally spilled salt all over my sandals. Yeah, the nice ones with the rubies in the heels. But wait, that’s not the messed up part. Right after I spilled it, my daughter told me my beard was ugly, I stubbed my toe on a barrel of mead, and a donkey named Horace drop-kicked me in the groin and laughed ’till he couldn’t breath. Also, I’ve kinda got the hots for your wife. That’s gotta be Satan, right? It’s all about the salt, dude, I’m tellin’ you.”

 

Except it isn’t.

 

These wacky superstitions are amusing, and quaint, but it seems difficult to find any relevance for them in a world in which we can, for instance, sew fake hair into the scalp of a human head. We’re no longer cave dwellers, cowering in awe under the light of the stars, lost in bafflement at the mystery of what lurks in darkness. It’s amazing, really – in a few short centuries, we’ve gone from ignorant tribes of wide-eyed survivalists to slightly less ignorant civilizations that can send probes to alien planets and build robots which vacuum our Cheetos crumbs. Lingering superstitions are simultaneously a marker of the progress we’ve made, and of how much further we still need to go.

 

The Psychic Library claims that, in contrast to other civilizations, ancient Chinese and Egyptian cultures viewed 13 as a lucky number. Egyptians in particular believed there were 12 stages of life, each one a step closer to spiritual enlightenment, with 13 representing the eternal afterlife. Maybe my dad’s got a touch of the pharaohs in him. He maintains that his 13th birthday falling on Friday the 13th was a stroke of good luck, and that all such Fridays are similarly earmarked for good fortune. I don’t subscribe to that theory myself, but I admire his optimism. It’s rosier than the doom-and-gloom, black cats and dark clouds view of this still-ominous calendar date.

 

Tonight, I’m going for a drive – a late-winter jaunt to wherever whim may take me. I wonder what ill fortune might await. My guess? Nothing at all.