Musings: There is superstitious writing on the wall

I opened a fortune cookie the other day, and it said  ‘You find beauty in ordinary things; do not lose this ability’. Now, how did this cookie know this? Do they have some magic person at the fortune cookie plant who knows me so well as to stuff this message in my cookie? And are they actually worried that I will lose this ability?

Of course not. Yet it still amazes me that not only do people often believe in these cookie messages, but that sometimes I do as well.

Let’s face it. We are still a society of conflicting beliefs and spiritualities. I do not consider myself overly superstitious, yet when I walk on sidewalks, I still try not to step on cracks so that mother’s back doesn’t break. I try not to walk under the ladder when I work with one, and get a chill up my spine when I do. And don’t get me started about spilling salt, which I do on occasion.

It’s in the spirit of this topic that I set out to do an experiment…I wanted to see just how many superstitious acts I could perform in one day, and see if the consequences were true.

First, I dropped a fork, and waited for a female visitor to arrive. Ironically, the Purolator lady showed up not long after with a package for me. I’m not sure this counts. Then, I dropped a spoon, and waited for a child to arrive. My son walked in the room at this point and said, ‘Mom says to stop dropping our cutlery on the floor!’ Apparently some people do not support scientific research.

Moving on, I broke a mirror, although not on purpose. I was starting to do a bathroom renovation, and the mirror broke. So, 7 years bad luck, apparently, although I’ll have to get back to you on that one. It did convince me to stop the work and contract it out, so in a way, it was good luck for someone else.

As I went outside to put out the garbage, I tripped over my dog, John. He’s entirely black, so I wonder if this was the ‘black cat’ effect. I’m not sure if it was such bad luck for me, but John limped for a couple of days, and gave me the ‘stink eye’ every time he saw me, so it wasn’t very lucky for him.

I found a penny face up, so I rushed off to buy a scratch-and-win ticket. I scratched-and-lost. So much for that one. I found a penny, and spent five bucks. Hmmmm, I think that superstition was created by OLG.

At this point, my ‘scientific research’ was running out of steam. I was having good luck when I should have had bad luck, and bad luck when good luck should have been there. This alone was making me superstitious. Throwing caution to the wind, I opened an umbrella inside the house, ate garlic, and then ran after my wife with mistletoe. I think the garlic put the kibosh on the mistletoe idea, but I was still game….keyword being ‘I’…..

This superstition thing just isn’t what it used to be. Technology has done away with so many of them, and created others. Try to blow out all your birthday candles now when some wag puts the trick candles that won’t blow out….it ends up as bad luck for everyone else because of the saliva that ends up on the cake from blowing so hard. The mistletoe can end up netting you a kid or two nine months later, and dropping cutlery only leads to washing more dishes.

Now, if only I could find that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow I just saw….

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