Not Even Not Zen 422: Biomythography - Note 133: Superstitions, Part I

Superstitions, Part I

When I was young, adults took their superstitions seriously - even when they said they didn't. Grown men froze when they saw a black cat. They told me they wouldn't cross paths with one even if it meant taking the long way around to where they were going. I don't think anyone does this nowadays but, as a child, I saw it done.

Sometimes my friends' mother would insist I throw a pinch of salt over my left shoulder when I spilled at the table. My friends, when we were looking up at the stars at night, wished upon falling stars with hope for their wishes being granted. We wished again when blowing out our birthday candles.

Men and women looked for omens in the gathering of birds. Adults feared crows so much they would walk away from a gathering of them. Others would exclaim, "Good luck" as they were hiking by my yard, stoop low, and snatch a four-leaf clover from the ground. Even when adults told me they didn't have any fears of magic, they entertained themselves with astrology, Ouija boards, or tarot (although tarot was somewhat openly feared). They expected bad luck when someone broke a mirror. They avoided cracks in the sidewalk for fear of "break your momma's back." They pulled out a keychain and showed everyone the lucky rabbit's foot they had attached.

People still do these things. The difference in how many people and how often has been tremendous. I've only realized it in retrospect, though. 

I used to visit the graveyard next to the house of my parents' friends. It was small and green. The trees around the headstones created a sheltered space to talk and play. I sang there. I whistled. But if an adult heard me making any sort of music, they would tell me to stop, citing the 'bad spirits' I might attract. (It wasn't even a comment on the quality my singing, apparently.)

"Don't open those umbrellas inside!" my grandmother would call from the kitchen to the foyer on a rainy day. "It's bad luck!"

If I started to open mine anyway, an uncle would leap in to intervene and repeat, "Bad luck! Bad luck!"

So I guess we all believed in luck. It was part of the age we lived in, although people's beliefs in the randomness of good fortune weren't consistent. My father scoffed at the idea that umbrellas could influence anything one way or another. He generally disdained superstitions not his own. However, whenever anything bad happened in the family he would mutter, "It comes in threes," meaning our misfortunes. Then he would stew over the problem until he thought of two other recent unlucky events. If he couldn't think of three in total, he would worry for a week or two until something bad happened, which he regarded as a relief.

This is a part of American social life no one talks about, which is the only reason it's worth mentioning. Superstitions were stronger going farther back in time. There were probably more of them, too. I remember a German friend of my parents who saw omens in fallen objects and the shapes they made when they fell. It was a superstition she grew up with. Plenty of people told me about lucky pennies - you have to find them head's up. If you pick up a penny when it's laying head's down, that's bad luck. It's why I decided as a teenager, still somewhat convinced of my bad luck, to pick up all the bad luck pennies I could. That way, no one else had to incur my sorts of misfortunes.

Three years running, my middle brother and I pulled apart the Thanksgiving turkey wishbone and made a wish. Eventually, the honor fell to my middle and youngest brother. (I think my middle brother won pretty much every time. He wasn't lucky so much as strong and smart enough to pick the best side. Luck, after all, favors the strong and the cunning - and the people who don't refuse their luck.)

For a few years, my father told me I had bad luck. (I had broken at least two mirrors although my father politely said he didn't know the reason for my misfortunes.) I possibly started my father's belief in my bad luck by complaining about it. In gumball machines, I would put in my penny and get, too often, no gumball. Then my younger brother would put his in, turn the crank, and get two or three. This sort of thing happened often enough for me to dread it, for my brother to laugh about it, and for my father to halfway believe in our luck situation. My brother and I would switch places in line suddenly, to try to fool the luck. We hardly ever did, it seemed. One time I put in a whole dime to get a Baby Ruth candy bar from a vending machine. Nothing came out. My brother put in his dime and got two candy bars.

For my father, who was watching us, this was a confirmation. He'd seen the bad luck in action too often. On that day, he offered to buy me another candy bar. (He didn't want to take the second candy bar from my brother.)

"I'll put in the dime and pull the lever," he said. "But you don't touch it."

I knew what he meant. My touch might transmit bad luck. Fortunately, luck didn't seem to be something I could give to others like a bad cold. It was mine alone.