Friday 13 September 2013

Eeeek! It's... Friday!

Hm. This only posting on Fridays thing is getting to be a habit. Rest assured, I shall do my utmost to break it! I’m just about back to normal health-wise now (thanks and hugs to everyone who sent kind wishes) and I have a couple of days off work next week, so that bodes well for new scribbles.

As for this here scribble, I thought I’d muse and ponder a bit about matters superstitious. It is, after all, Friday the 13th – the unluckiest sort of Friday there is!

Apparently. To be honest I have no idea why Friday the 13th is considered unlucky. Let’s look it up on Wikipedia.

Hm. No real reason at all, it seems! (Sorry for the spoiler). Friday is thought an unlucky day in some cultures and thirteen an unlucky number. Put them together and presto: an ‘unlucky’ day. I did learn something from the Wiki article, though. It turns out that the Spanish equivalent is Tuesday 13th. And the Italian one is Friday 17th! Those crazy Italians!

Which just goes to show how silly and arbitrary superstitions are.

Still, I will confess to not being immune. Whenever I see a lone magpie (supposedly bad luck), I whisper “Hello Mister Magpie, how’s your wife?” under my breath; an incantation that (supposedly) counteracts the bad luck. I know it’s silly, and I feel silly as I say it, but I still feel compelled to. And that’s how superstitions work, of course: they circumvent our rationality and speak to something more primal.

The above musings may or may not be a sly indication of a theme that I mean to work into a spanking story; I couldn’t possibly say. That’d be bad luck.

10 comments:

  1. Welcome to the girls reformatory Inmate Penny-you'll be known as number 0013.Strange you should be sent here in this date.Punishment spankings in front of the other inmates start at 13.00hrs...)

    Just repeat this and it'll banish any magpie bad luck forever

    "One for sorrow, two for joy
    Three for a girl and four for a boy
    Five for silver, six for gold
    Seven for a srecret never to be told"

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    1. Argh! I knew 13 was an unlucky number! :(

      And thank you for the magpie rhyme - I knew it already but I didn't know it acted as a lucky thing. Even so I think it will take some extensive reprogramming to stop me saying hello to lone magpies! ;D

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    2. I've never heard this rhyme, nor have I ever seen a magpie, to the best of my knowledge. I guess there must not be any on this side of the pond. Do they never travel in groups of more than seven? Very peculiar.

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    3. Hehe :) I can't say I've ever counted. It's the ones on their own that obsess and trouble me.

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  2. I guess we pick and choose our superstitions (or they pick and choose us). I'm a happily-walk-under-ladders kind of guy, but I do sometimes catch myself avoiding the cracks in the pavement. Mind you, I think that's less to do with superstition and more to do with the fact that there's something not quite right in my head!

    Then again, some superstitions only make sense in the right context. For example, there's no reason breaking a mirror should bring you bad luck - unless, Penny, you have already been warned about swinging that hockey stick indoors!

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    1. That's so funny! I was going to mention not being phased by exactly those things - walking under ladders and stepping on cracks in the pavement - but thought I might have rambled on enough as it was.

      And, strange but true, the breaking a mirror one occurred just the other day, as I knocked a little hand mirror off the side in the bathroom. The frame broke but the mirror itself was okay. Cue me rabbiting on to BH about the silliness of superstitions... why should it be seven years' bad luck? Why not four, or twelve? Who makes these rules?

      I like your take on it. :)

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  3. That's quite funny :D In Nepal, the number three is thought to be an unlucky number (I don't know why). I always questioned why they set tables for three in Nepali restaurants, despite that.

    Oh, and the Chinese believe that if you wear red undies when you gamble during the New Year, your luck will improve. Also, they do not believe in cleaning the house during Chinese New Year because apparently if you sweep the rubbish out of your house, you sweep your wealth away.

    I've never heard about the lone magpie superstition though. There was another one about sleeping in front of reflective surfaces... which was a bad thing to do..

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    1. Thanks for the insight into Nepalese and Chinese superstitions, pao :D They sound about as silly as any others!

      And yes, the number of magpies you see denotes different things, as outlined in Mr X's rhyme above. One is bad, two is good. All completely nonsensical.

      I guess (definitely the right word) that these things are ultimately comforting; they give people a sense of control in a vast and unpredictable universe. I like the red pants one :D

      Hm. Maybe the number 3 being thought unlucky comes from the three little pigs story.

      Ah. Except the third one was alright, wasn't he? Okay, forget that.

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  4. So many superstitions! I suppose if you walk under a ladder there's more chance of something falling on you..)

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    1. Well, yes :D But why that specific thing should have a superstition attached to it, I don't know. Nobody says it's 'bad luck' to tightrope walk along phone cables... it's just a dangerous thing to do!

      Might have to email the Easter Bunny and ask what it's all about.

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