Topic #7: Press Your Luck

This was a heavy week, this last week. With midterms, and grades, and the military's invasion of SHHS, I think there's been enough deep thinking and ponderous, somber hearts. And yet, it is still the Most Evil Time Of The Year, so we can't just start talking about kittens and rainbows.


So let's go with luck. And superstitions.

(Big bucks, no whammies, no whammies, no whammies . . . STOP!)

Many people say they don't believe in superstitions; they scoff at the idea that rubbing a potato on your warts and then burying the potato in a graveyard at midnight will make the warts disappear. Or the one about black cats crossing your path, or saying "Bread and butter" whenever you and a friend walk on opposite sides of something.

But those same people will be the most assiduous in avoiding the Jinx, the modern version of the Evil Eye or the Devil himself.

We all know the Jinx -- it is the reason that the superstition that has lasted from older times to now is knocking on wood, originally intended to startle the evil spirits that lived inside wood (trees are bad -- the forest is the Devil's place; just read The Wizard of Oz, or "Hansel and Gretel") and now seen as a valid protection against saying something foolish like "I've never broken a bone." Heaven forbid you add something like, "And I never will." That's just asking for trouble. But if you knock on wood, you might be safe. Of course, Murphy's Law, which we also believe in with great regularity and fervor, also convinces us that you are likely going to break a bone no matter what you do, and that it will most likely be the night before your wedding when you do it. Because anything bad that can happen, will happen. Right?
(By the way: if you don't believe in luck as an actual force, then Murphy's Law, or the opposite -- the idea that you're "due for a win" after some large number of losses in a row -- are both logically false.  Every time you take a chance of something happening, the chances are not changed by past results, only by current circumstances.  I'm just sayin'.)

So the names have changed a little bit -- we don't talk about drawing the eye of Satan any more -- but we still have all the superstitions we once did, it seems to me. Now we just talk about luck. And the power of positive thinking.

So my question is, what do you believe about luck? Do you have good luck or bad luck? Do you do anything to preserve or change your luck? What superstitious habits, if any, do you have? Can you think of any other superstitions that people seem to follow?



A response by Saturday, November 14, please.