She’ll huff. She’ll puff. She’ll make your life a living hell because – guess what fellas – you forgot what day it is. That’s right, it’s Friday the 13th. What did you think I was talking about, Valentine’s day? No way.
What I’m talking about is everyone’s favorite day – a day when superstition becomes the royal monarch of our behavior. A day when people like you and I have to keep our radars finely tuned because there’s going to be a mass murder somewhere involving teens, sex and a pro football player wearing a hockey mask and tight gloves.
I wouldn’t consider myself a superstitious person, but I can tell you one thing for sure my friends haven’t nicknamed me Lucky because I’ve had a million girlfriends. So today, as you’re gearing up to spend the weekend spooning your significant other or setting old pictures on fire, I’ll be knocking on every maple from here to West Virginia in an attempt to bolster my luck and finally win the lottery.
As for everyone else who got off to a bad start this morning, I’ve compiled a few things you should avoid – besides the obvious black cat and broken mirror – to keep you alive and healthy for at least one more day.
For starters, there are fortune cookies. Sure you’ve probably eaten enough of them to realize they’re always generic , like “today you will be tired,” but I’m convinced somewhere there is a culinary craftsman with a magical, all-seeing third eye, just waiting for an opportunity to drop a mis-fortune cookie bombshell and leave you wondering what you just ate for dinner.
Second, trucker hats. Ask Ashton Kutcher if he’d be wandering around Hollywood with a brightly-colored target on his head. That’s asking for a rampaging postal worker to hunt you down and ship what’s left of you to your significant other. Do yourself a favor and take the hat off, write John Deere an apology letter, and then – if you’re lucky – his ghost won’t slap you.
Third, Dr. Seuss. Despite his magical charm with little kids and Christmas stories, here is a man who created the modern horror genre. Reading his short stories is like asking to wake up in bizarre-o land flanked by Jason and Freddy.
If something strange happens today, we all know that somehow it is Dr. Seuss’ master plan to make us so flabbergasted when reading his books that we start speaking in rhyme and completely ruin any chances of finding a date for Valentine’s day.
Horton may have heard a Who, but us mortals who’d like to hear the birds chirp this spring will drop the cutesy act and tell you any book with more made up words than real ones has to be occult related.
You probably think all this is stupid, and you should go back to your everyday lives and forget about my insignificant rant on bogus superstitions, but I’m willing to bet you’ll be avoiding sidewalk cracks and picking up pennies that are face-down long after today is over.
Superstitions start somewhere, and I for one think if spilling salt is bad luck, then stale cookies, hideous hats, and a brilliant, yet incredibly strange man can be just as unlucky. Either way you look at it, no one’s sure why we do some things in life.
We all know the superstitions of today are connotative of people in the past. Maybe in the future people will say it’s bad luck to download music right before you see a concert. No one knows for sure.
The only thing I can say is that today is the luckiest day of the week, because T.G.I.F. – Thank Goodness It’s Friday, and no matter how many ladders we walk under or how many umbrellas we open inside, we still have two days before an infectious case of the Mondays, which hits worse than SARS. So pull out your four-leaf clover and keep your eyes peeled, because today there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.
David Cross is a junior in journalism. He can be reached for comment at [email protected].
