Superstitions come in all shapes and sizes. Some are familiar to most of us, such as a black cat crossing your path brings bad luck, or if you walk under a ladder a piano will fall on your head and crush your personal body, or if you step on a crack you’ll break you mother’s back, then you get home to see your mother standing in the kitchen, folded in half like a Consumer Cellular flip phone. After enough of these unrelated incidents happened in the past, they left the realm of reality and became superstitions even though some people walked under ladders and only a bucket of paint fell on them, but that’s the exception. If a black cat crosses your path and then you walk under a ladder, a bucket of paint and a piano will drop on you. The good news is that it will most likely pause you in your journey and prevent you from stepping on a crack, thereby saving your mother from being vertically challenged.
These three superstitions are a sampling of those known to us as intelligent Americans, but there are many more accepted by other cultures currently and in the past. For instance (and these are real): In Europe, placing bread upside down is bad luck especially if you’ve already covered a slice with marmalade. The Irish believe that if you get up from a rocking chair and leave it in motion, you’re inviting dark spirits or ghosts to come into you home to sit (on a related home note, some Americans believe that if you burn your house to the ground, it will stop endless solicitations from those who either want buy or sell your home). People in Turkey, India, and South Korea believe that if you trim your fingernails or toenails after dark, it will bring on bad luck or even death, especially if you use a gasoline powered chain saw. Russians and Hungarians believe that if you sit at the corner of a table to eat, you’ll never get married (now you tell me!) And back to those whacky Americans who believe that obtaining a new social security number can change their luck or fortune; or in a presidential election, the Electoral College actually considers your vote.
I’ve touched on just a few of the widely and less widely accepted superstitions, but there are some others that almost nobody knows that, if ignored, can actually devastate a person’s life. For instance: Somewhere out there are those who believe if you drink a rutabaga smoothie during the Perseid meteor shower, you’ll no longer have the ability to recite passages from the Necronomicon. Or if you upsize to a large order of fries at a fast food restaurant, your significant other will be attacked by a pack of rabid dingoes when you stick the last fry in your mouth. If you staple a piece of your underwear to a wall, you’ll be inundated with texts from a Komodo dragon selling Dr. Scholl’s foot powder whose number can’t be blocked on your Apple 37 iphone.
I would guess that if you pooh-pooh the consequences of these last superstitions and go ahead and perform the actions, you should at least play it safe and get under a ladder. In most cases, a piano falling on you head would be the preferred alternative.