I’m sure you believe something weird. I’m relatively superstition-free, but I have close friends who are Russians, and some Russians (PLAYFUL STEREOTYPING, YOU ARE A DELIGHTFUL PEOPLE) are basically 13th century doctors in terms of their attachment to semi-magical ways to protect themselves and their loved ones from the vagaries of fate.
EXAMPLE: Wishing someone a happy birthday before their actual birthday. Or having a party before their actual birthday. It’s out! It’s right out. My friend’s brother, in violation of superstition, held his birthday party before the day of, and my friend quietly sang: “Goodbye to your old year / goodbye to your old year / goodbye goodbye goodbye to your old year” while everyone else sang the canonical song I will not transcribe here lest I have to pay royalties.
What do you believe in? What does your grandmother believe in?
Tags: friday the thirteenth, magic, russians, superstitions
My granny would always call on new years Day to make sure we’d said “rabbit rabbit” when we woke up. I think it was just supposed to be for good luck. She also used to throw a bit of salt over her left shoulder when cooking.
Less of a superstition and more of a traditional religious belief: My indigenous Australian mother-in-law believed that when she saw a willy wagtail it was the spirit of her adopted mother (as the willy wagtail was that lady’s totem animal).
My husband’s is the cockatoo, and one day in the city we saw a man carrying a cockatoo in a large wire cage. It was screeching incredibly loudly and indignantly, and as we got closer, the man dropped the cage and the cockatoo flew away and up to the top of a very tall city building. It was such an eerie moment but so beautiful to see the bird freed as it clearly wished to be.
I’m pretty superstition-free though, I can’t think of any weird things I believe in!
Where does one get a totem animal?
In my husband’s tribe’s case, from what I understand, it’s by tribe and by family/gender: the men in his family have one totem and the women in his family have another, and then there’s the tribe one. I think. We only discussed it pretty briefly a long time ago!
Oh, okay, that makes sense. I was thinking, “Is this an Australian thing I’ve never heard of before? Does everyone have a totem animal?” but that makes much more sense.
I don’t have a lot of superstitions, but I am intensely traditional (with my family-specific traditions, not nationwide stuff). Like, my family goes to the North Carolina State Fair every year, and we always follow the same progression of places and do the same things, and any time there’s a chance of deviating from that tradition and I don’t know going to The Wisconsin Cheese Place AFTER the NC State Ice Cream Place, I feel deeply uncomfortable and unwilling to do this thing.
On an unrelated note, I really love singing “Goodbye to your old year” as a way to say Happy Birthday; it seems like a beautiful and sad way to move on to a new age.
I’m not particularly superstitious, but every time I say something like “Nothing bad ever happens to me on Friday the 13th,” I feel the need to knock on wood or say “knock wood.” Apparently there’s a part of me that needs to make it clear that I’m not asking for trouble when I say such things.
I’m in the same boat here– I don’t think of myself as superstitious, but I always knock on wood when I say something bad hasn’t happened to me before/never happens/etc. I sometimes do it even if I THINK “I’ve never had (bad thing here) happen to me.” It is such an ingrained habit that I feel uncomfortable if I am in a situation where knocking on something would seem out of place!
AND, to make it even weirder, if there is no wood around, I knock twice on the top of my head? Which is just a weird, vaguely-rude carryover from when I was younger and my sisters and I would use one another’s heads as a wood replacement to indicate that we thought the other sister had wood instead of brains? I don’t know.
Yes, in the absence of wood I knock on my own head as well…or my husband’s. My sister and I used to do that when we were younger too. I don’t know where we got it from – school? It’s not something my parents would do.
It is absolutely something my parents do, and that’s where we got it. (As in they knock on their own heads. Weirdos, I say fondly.)
I knock on wood, too. I also imagine myself knocking on wood when I think something like that.
I have a friend whose last name is Wood, so when I’m around her I knock on her instead.
I don’t know where I read this–the Hairpin? it feels like it might have been the Hairpin?–but someone advised that for good travel mojo, I should walk around the block, carrying an empty bag at midnight on New Year’s Eve. I was desperate to get to London this year, so I tried it. I did go to London, and also New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Nashville and Ireland. I’m officially believing in that now.
I tried this and all I got was a nasty break-up and staying in the same place for another year. Your mileage may vary.
sorry 🙁
sorry for harshing your buzz man. i’m glad it worked for you!
I will do this this year. Hope for me!
I’m superstitious about music. If I am stressed out waiting to find out some news– whether I got a job I interviewed for, etc.– I can only listen to somber, gloomy music. Nothing upbeat, or I might jinx it.
I don’t know that I have a lot of superstitions, but I do have quite a few traditions that HAVE to be done or things get all wonky. Most are Christmas and New Years’ traditions: for Christmas my mother makes rice porridge with one peeled almond mixed into it; whoever gets the almond in their bowl has good luck until the next Christmas (I have only ever found it once in my life; my brother and dad tend to get them frequently. Rigged? Perhaps). And on New Years’ Eve we throw molten tin into a bucket of cold water and the shadows cast by the shape created by the tin when it hardens are meant to tell us our next year’s luck. It’s the Finnish way.
That said, I don’t like walking under ladders and I do give a kiss-tap to the ceiling of my car if I fly through a yellow light. I don’t know where I got that, but not doing it seems like tempting the traffic camera gods.
I have a friend who MUST put the pad of his index finger to the top edge of the windshield when driving over railroad tracks. He has never adequately explained to me why this is necessary.
uhh. interesting. does he think the windshield is about to fall out and his finger can save it?
I always assumed it was like hitting the ceiling for a yellow light but the delicacy with which he does it always intrigued me.
Now I have Joan Armatrading in my head. (Yay!)
I hadn’t heard that before! I enjoyed it! Thank you! Whenever I think of being lucky the first song that tends to pop into my head is Bif Naked’s “Lucky,” which I attribute to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The next is Ben Folds’ “The Luckiest,” though that to me is a specifically romantic type of luck, so it doesn’t always ping up on just plain ol’ luck.
I do a rather violent variant on the kiss-tap, wherein I slam my hand on the ceiling of my car as I go through a yellow. I briefly had a car with a sunroof and it did not work well with this.
Only odd numbers of flowers should be in bouquets. If there’s an uneven number, I pretend I don’t feel uncomfortable but will pluck one out as soon as possible and put it in a separate glass of water, so that I have two odd-numbered bouquets instead. The superstition is that even-numbered bouquets are complete and mean death. (A dozen roses are trouble!). It’s an Eastern European thing, I think?
My family also had @icebergmama’s tradition of saying “rabbit rabbit” on the first of the month, except that it was actually a competition — whoever was fastest to remember that it was the first day of the month ran around yelling “rabbit rabbit” at everyone else because whoever said it first would get all the other person’s good luck for the month. I have no idea where this comes from.
I’m not a terribly superstitious person, but I do hold a little to the same thing described with the birthday, especially with pregnancies – like, don’t talk about something as a surety until it is, I guess? I remember when I was graduating from 6th grade, my mom was pregnant, and I wanted her to write something about my new little sibling in the yearbook ad she took out for me, and she refused. Because he would have been born when the yearbook came out, but wasn’t when she was writing it up. So I guess I hold that a bit.
My friend is from Brazil, and she and her family have some serious rules. You can’t let yourself in or out of their house – they must do it for you, or else the idea is that you’ll never come back. Something about shoes too.
I live in Brazil and people are really serious about that! You also have to exit the same door you entered, if the house has more than once. And you can’t leave cabinet doors open. And look everyone in the eye when you cheers.
I believe in good luck when you find coins. If it’s heads up, the luck is even stronger.
I also say ‘big white rabbit’ in French on the first of the month. It has to be the first thing you say or it doesn’t count.
Oh, and I knock on wood, of course.
Funny, I forgot that today was the 13th. Just last night I was listening to a podcast about curses and it occurred to me that superstition is just another way to convince ourselves that when bad things happen, people earned, or deserved it somehow rather than it just being a random thing that could happen to anyone.
Okay, I said “rabbit rabbit” when I was at a sleepover on the first of this month and everybody looked at me like I’d grown a second head, so I am relieved I’m not the only person who’s heard of it. (They also all cut their bagels while holding them, which after the kitchen injuries thread made me panic.)
New Year’s Day requires Hoppin’ John (black-eyed peas, basically). Rosh Hashanah requires apples and honey, even if I’m lazy and don’t go to temple. Spilled salt goes over the left shoulder. I’m sure there are more I can’t remember right now.
If I spill salt I throw a pinch over my shoulder to blind the devil/prevent bad luck.
I also catch ‘fairies’ (floating flower seeds) and make wishes on them before blowing them away.
Finding feathers is good luck.
I always throw spilled salt over my shoulder. It’s just a natural relfex, but I have a few friends that get REALLY annoyed when I do it. Say something snaky type of annoyed. Which is a weird reaction on their part, it’s not like I’m throwing the whole shaker or a full handful or anything.
I do some of the things mentioned here: “rabbit rabbit,” touching wood (or, in the absence of wood, my head), saying “bread and butter” when a pole or architectural feature passes between me and a companion as we walk. In more than one move, I bought bread, salt, and wine to give life in the new home plenty, flavor, and joy.
I’m not sure where the dividing line is between superstition and ritual: if I don’t do these things, I don’t fear consequences. It just feels… incomplete, like not acknowledging a person’s sneeze with a “gesundheit.” It’s social, not magical.
I’m not sure I have any real superstitions, anything that I irrationally feel will alter the course of events.
On the other hand: already this morning, I was pulled from a scant few hours’ sleep by a phishing phone call, then the toilet clogged, so by the time Ms. I’m Not Superstitious No Not Me realized it was Friday the 13th, I said out loud “OF COURSE.” How’s that for rational?
Bread and butter! I’ve always done that because my dad did it with me and I have never known the origin. I’ve gotten my partner to do it now, too.
Similar to the food-in-a-home thing, my boss at my high school job insisted that when one gets a new car, someone else must throw a handful of change in and around the floor for good fortune.
My family has always done a “for good fortune” dollar and a penny in any wallet or purse or wallet/purse like thing that was given as a gift.
I’m delighted to see so many other people knocking on wood, throwing salt over their left shoulders, and kissing/punching the ceilings of their car upon going through yellow lights.
As some of you know, my mom donated a kidney to me about fifteen years ago (<3 u, mom) and she’s a little superstitious in that she doesn’t like to celebrate, or mention, the anniversary of the transplant, whereas late every June I go “YAAAY IT’S BEEN 8/12/15 YEARS, GO KIDNEY”. I am OK with this. (I did make cookies for everyone in my office and encouraged everyone to sign up as a donor on my own though, because GO KIDNEY)
Go kidney! I think you should acknowledge it! Imagine your mom’s kidney blushing and shuffling its little kidney feet every year 😉
Oh! kissing the roof of my car when I go through a yellow light! I had forgotten about that one because I barely drive anymore.
And yayyyy kidney!
I would definitely celebrate that kidney! GO KIDNEY, GO!
If nobody tells me to have a safe trip in the couple of days before I fly somewhere, I lose my mind because that means the plane is going to crash.
I also cannot tell anyone to tell me it.
Oh god if anyone around me talks about plane problems/crashes etc while I am waiting for a flight or on a flight I will very not so nicely tell them to shut their mouths.
This is part superstition and part oh-my-god-don’t-start-a-riot-are-you-dumb.
Have a safe flight!
That’ll work for at least a little while, right?
If you’re not traveling soon, I want my money back.
Oooh, good. I always tell everyone to have a safe flight before they go on a trip somewhere. I hope I am always relieving their anxieties.
Oh I have the backwards version. If I don’t say something like, “See you soon… so long as my plane doesn’t blow up mid-flight…” then my plane WILL blow up mid flight.
This goes for a lot of things. I have to suggest the worst outcome to prevent it from happening. I guess I like to be pleasantly surprised?
I eat the whole fortune cookie before I read the fortune or else it won’t come true.
There’s this one about everyone in a group of people walking on the same side of a pole or else you’ll get in a fight. (I don’t know, this one is hard to explain and increasingly seems like something my mom made up?)
Scratch the roof of the car as you go under a yellow light to keep it from turning red while you’re in the intersection.
My then-boyfriend now husband told me that one! If you let something separate you physically while walking it will separate your love, or whatever. I was really upset the first time he walked on the wrong side of a pole after that. Was he trying to break up with me!?
My only superstition that I stick to might not be a real superstition, but it’s that we do not talk about how my [adult] acne is clearing up when it starts to clear up because it will hear you and say “oh shit, they noticed!” and then I break out again.
I also knock on wood socially.
Oh man, Russia! <3 u, never change! I can no longer bring myself to whistle indoors, because they think it will cause all your money to fly away. They also think if a woman sits on a cold stone object or directly on the ground, it will make her infertile. I have been yelled at for doing this.
On Friday the 13th, I have a superstition about not wearing jewelry, because several times when I did so said jewelry got lost. But I forgot what today was, so I am wearing all my normal stuff. So we’ll see how that goes.
Other superstitions I follow include throwing salt over my shoulder if I spill some on the table, and knocking on wood.
I also laugh at, but obey several, Russian superstitions. The sitting on the ground one is hilarious.
I can NEVER give someone an even number of flowers anymore. It has resulted in my throwing many flowers away bc so many are sold by the dozen.
Also: empty bottles on the floor, stepping on someone’s foot after they’ve stepped on yours.
Oh man, I lived in Georgia (the former Russian republic one) and I got yelled at for sitting on cold stone or metal all the time! I was also scolded for sitting at the corner of a table a few times, as this means you won’t get married for 7 years. A decade later I’m still single and childless, so….
The sitting-on-a-cold-surface thing isn’t a superstition; it’s medicine. Like wearing a scarf when you have a sore throat.
I always have good luck on Friday the 13s, and have planned a trip with my kid today.
My in-laws believe that if you catch a draft you will catch pneumonia and die and every time we visit them they offer me a variety of slippers my wide feet won’t fit in, and chase my kid around trying to slipper him up. If they visit us in the winter, they complain about the cold. If they were willing to subsidize our heating bill I’d bump it up, but they don’t, so wev. Basically, the cold will kill you dead so watch out.
My grandmother believed that you had to put your shoes on in a certain order or Very Bad Things will happen. My mom still puts her shoes on this way. She sent some time once putting her shoes on the “wrong” way but felt uncomfortable all day until she took her shoes off and put them on again “correctly.”
I don’t have any superstitions I can think of, other than 13 being lucky.
oh yes god my in-laws are like this too. obsessed with the slippers and the drafts and closing all the individual doors of rooms, even if it’s very hot out and we might actually want a cross-breeze. It mixes with the fact that they do sometimes get strong breezes because they are on the 8th floor of a building and the glass in doors could shatter. but that’s just an excuse, because my husband is obsessed with the drafts in our apartment, too, and will sometimes actually put slippers on my feet or bring them to me if I am not wearing them. Drafts will mysteriously make you sick! (I am of the “fresh air is good for you” school, and open windows while you sleep, so it is an interesting negotiated stand-off 🙂 ).
Too much Victoria Holt as an impressionable girl has left me with a…distaste for peacocks feathers as personal adornment. I hesitate to call it a superstitions, but you’ll never catch me wearing one.
I grew up in a house full of what my friends call “Catholic Voodoo.”
There’s a cure in the water on the Feast of the Assumption (8/15). Typically that’s when my folks would take a vacation to the beach and my mom ALWAYS made us all get in the water now matter how cold or full of jellies it was. And when I’m not at the beach and my folks are, my mom sends me a bottle of Assumption-Water.
Always say a quick prayer to St. Zita for lost keys (which for me was often), the St Anthony prayer for every other lost thing (Dear St Anthony, please come ’round, something’s lost and can’t be found). All through college I wore a St. Francis de Sales medal (the patron saint of writers) and FLIPPED OUT whenever the chain broke or it went missing.
Also, you should bury a small statue of St Joseph in your front yard upside down to sell a house. There are kits for this.
And regarding “knocking wood” — I had someone correct me recently that you knock wood while you’re speaking (not after), that way evil spirits/creatures can’t understand what you’re saying and can’t foul it up. I’ve started doing this too.
I used to be very superstitious (lots of lucky objects/jewelry/clothing that I would wear for tests and such) but most of it’s run off now. This has been an act of willpower on my part, as I’m part Irish on one side and part Sicilian on the other and my grandmother was appalled when my mother was taking baby me for a walk one day and I wasn’t wearing any red to keep people from putting the malocchio on me. (There is a hand gesture that goes with the malocchio that kind of looks like the hook-em-horns symbol, shaken, as you move your arm up and down.)
I used to have a “lucky” t-shirt that I always got hit on when I was wearing, but I realized later it was just super cleavagey.
Knocking on word and trying not to jinx a good thing.
Also I hate hate hate walking on top of graves. Either in your standard cemetery or old Churches that have people buried under the floor and the slabs say “here lies so and so”. It squicks me out and feels disrespectful.
I’m very, very superstitious about dreams. Everyone I’ve dreamed about kissing, I’ve ended up actually kissing in real life. I also always hold my breath when driving or walking past graveyards.
My dad’s family is Italian and all of the men (except my dad, who doesn’t believe in anything) wear cornicello necklaces to ward off the evil eye. When I bought my car, my grandmother insisted that I shove a plastic baggy full of salt into the crevice of the backseat. My mom’s family is Irish and her grandparents and father were very superstitious about banshees, faeries, and changelings (I feel goony and stereotypical even typing that, but it’s true.) All of the pillowcases at my great grandmother’s house had a little iron ring stitched into the corner to protect you while you were sleeping.
I try pretty hard to make my return journey by a different route than I made the original one. I read something somewhere about the Romani doing this, because if you went back over your old path, you’d somehow reverse everything that happened on that trip. Then I read a bunch of neuroscience stuff that weirdly seemed to back up this superstition and now I can’t not do it.
I also throw out the dregs of my tea for the gods every morning. Or the fey. Or whoever wants it, I guess.
Most of my superstitions were acquired not because I believe them but because I like the idea of them.
I make wishes when I catch that the clock is at 1:11, 2:22, 3:33, etc. 11:11 is the mother lode (it’s happening right now!!).
Every time I get on an airplane, I knock on the exterior of the plane as I’m stepping on. Just in case.
There are certain words that must not be said on boats, namely, in the galley there is a basin, NOT A SINK.
Also when I can’t find something I yell (aloud, heaven-wards) at my (deceased) grandmother that I can’t find it, and then said lost item usually appears within 2 minutes. She believed that cold feet meant you’d catch a cold and had these tiny little saint statues in like 5 different purses, assumedly for luck. I do not know what saint they were, but we kept finding them while going through her things and it was both heartbreaking and great. (Look, you brought up grandmas, okay? I have grandma issues.)
On Friday the 13th my grandfather would refuse to get out of bed lest anything bad happened to him. Like he would literally stay in the bed all day, skip work, even refuse to get up to go to the bathroom. My mother says that he would keep a bucket by the bed in case he needed to pee, which is gross. Several levels of gross.
I’m superstitious about opening umbrellas indoors and also bringing the flowers off a hawthorn tree into a house is a serious no-no that I’ve learnt from my mother (I don’t know, something to do with death or fairies or something). Another odd one I’ve picked up from growing up in the country side is to not pick blackberries after September because they’ve been tainted by the sióga.
It seems like keeping a bucket of staling pee by the bedside is a mishap in the making.
Totally. He was not a man known for logic or sense.
I believe that when I eat meat, I absorb the suffering of the animal. this adds extra self-loathing to my occasional jr. bacon cheeseburger.
Also, i have to press the seat recline button during take off, because when I was little a flight attendant told me it would help the plane get up in the air. sometimes I try not to hit the button, but then I spend the rest of the flight making peace with my God every time we hit a patch of turbulence.
We’re not allowed to accept knives as gifts in my family. It’s bad luck. So if you give someone a knife, they have to pay you for it. Like a quarter or a dollar.
Yes! One of my great-aunts gave me a knife set as a wedding gift, except that what she actually did was, she gave me a penny, and then she sold me a knife set for one penny. (My husband had never heard of this superstition and thought we were all crazy.)
No telling anyone (except the father and doctor) that you’re pregnant until the first trimester is over.
Generally avoid talking about applications and the like until it is certain that you have been accepted/are going/have the job. Both of these are partly superstition (don’t want to jinx it) and partly because if you tell everyone and then it goes sideways, now you have to talk about how you didn’t get the thing you were hoping for.
When I was a kid I learned from the kids on the schoolbus to hold my breath when driving past a cemetery. I think we also took our feet off the floor for that.
Also, it’s “The Scottish Play”, not Macbeth if you’re in a theatre.
My great-grandma is the source of all my family’s superstitions and was something of a dream interpreter. She loved talking to people about there dreams, and while she had a pretty complex system of omens and portents, the one I remember most is dreaming of losing teeth: it always means death (not necessarily you, but someone around you, or a big public demise). She also taught my mom that an itch left palm means you’re going to get some money, and an itch right one means you’re going to pay out; bruises during pregnancy turn into birthmarks on the baby; and we all knock wood all the damn time.
Then there’s a whole baseball superstitions, which we also got from Great Gram, who was a life-long die-hard Cubs fan. I once ruined a no-hitter from 1000 miles away from the game, just by saying to my boyfriend “Is he doing that thing that I’m not supposed to talk about?”, so that stuff is pretty serious too.
Also everybody talking about tempting fate reminded me of the best thing the West Wing ever did. Everybody go outside, turn around three times and spit!
I used to act, and that comes with a load of little superstitions. ‘Macbeth’ had to be referred to as ‘the Scottish play’ in the theatre, or else tragedy would occur during a run. To undo the Macbeth curse, one had to go outside, spin three times and spit.
Then, of course, there’s the whole ‘break a leg’ thing, that stems from the logical corollary of the idea that wishing anyone a good night on stage would bring bad luck
[obligatory “West Wing” spit/swear quotation]
I travel a fair amount, and will not change my watch to reflect the time zone I’m traveling to until we land and the flight attendant announces the time change/local time over the PA system. Something about tempting fate with hubris in that one. This isn’t something I heard elsewhere, just a weird personal neurosis.
My therapist was utterly shocked when I told her I needed to reschedule today’s appointment because it was Friday the 13th because I “seem so sensible.” Joke’s on you, therapist, I’m a 10 pound batch of superstition in a 5 pound bag!
My family is prone to late-term miscarriages so we have a lot of superstition around that. Like you don’t buy or make anything for a baby before it’s born, because it’s just tempting fate. You don’t tell anyone you’re pregnant until well into the second trimester. It makes it super awkward at baby showers for non-family members because the logical part of me is going “You are an asshole if you don’t bring a gift” and the rest of me is going “YEAH BUT IT WILL BE YOUR FAULT IF SHE MISCARRIES AND DO YOU REALLY WANT THAT ON YOUR CONSCIENCE???”
Unrelated to dead babies: I always hold my breath when I’m going past a graveyard and keep holding it until I pass a white house. Only funeral bouquets get even numbers of flowers. Seeing a single crow means that someone you know is going to die, but it’s good luck if you’ve got a murder of them on your roof because that means you’re coming into money. And on and on and on.
I am basically a little neurotic ball of superstition, really.
When I was younger my mom had this little eye pin (like literally just an eyeball) that you were supposed to pin somewhere unobtrusive on your clothing (like on your bra strap) when you flew on an airplane to protect you from the ‘evil eye,’ or I guess plane crashes. I don’t think of my mom as particularly superstitious, but I guess she needed something extra to get her through the Advent of Air Travel.
I do rabbit rabbit when I remember, and knock wood a lot. I also try not to use familial excuses (illness, death) to get out of things — I am the queen of excuses — lest CRUEL IRONY visit them upon my loved ones.
I sometimes throw salt over my shoulder, and sometimes say rabbit rabbit, but I knock wood a fair amount, and whenever any of my friends are flying, I MAKE them promise to call me the minute their planes have landed safely. That last one’s not really superstitious, but I want my friends to know that I care. And I do get mad if they don’t call. Or at least check in at their airport on foursquare or something.
–Salt over the left shoulder when it’s spilled
–Wishes on 11:11 and stray eyelashes that you blow away
–BUT, you can never tell anyone what the wish is or it won’t come true
–No peacock feathers in the house, bad bad luck
My favorite new semi-superstitious thing I learned is from a friend whose mother is Greek. If you’re out shopping with a friend, if someone buys a new item of clothing you say a word I could never hope to type but sounds something like “may-ya,” which sort of translates to “wear it with luck.”
Seeing your name on a grave–especially if it’s your actual tombstone. I threw a fit when the cemetary put in my mother’s headstone before she was already dead. I made them take it out again. Pre-buying a plot does not mean you want to see the headstone already in the ground.
I won’t buy baby clothes or anything “just in case” or “for when it happens” (never buy clothes for a new job before you are officially offered the new job). Because that’s just going to jinx it. In general I just don’t get too excited or expect things to happen. Once you count on them they are going to fall through).
In our family we must have brand new underwear to wear for/on New Year’s Day. We also eat black eyed peas.
Never, ever look in the mirror in the dark. Because you are going to see something that you don’t want to see.
My mom always has to say “Have a safe trip!” and have my brother or I say back “I will!” when we drive or go on a plane. Always always always.
I don’t like to stop the microwave unless the timer ends in a 5 or 0. Whenever I pause it on another number, I feel inordinately rebellious.
I don’t know if this counts as a superstition (instead of an irrational fear or whatever). Up until I was 11 I couldn’t turn my back to any air vent for fear of the guy who ate livers in the X-files episode “Squeeze.”
In terms of actual superstitions, I need to have citrus fruits around me for New Year’s Eve and eat noodles on my birthday.
True story, I slept with lights on for a week after watching that episode. During my SENIOR YEAR OF COLLEGE.
Oh man, I lived in Georgia (the former Russian republic one) and I got yelled at for sitting on cold stone or metal all the time! I was also scolded for sitting at the corner of a table a few times, as this means you won't get married for 7 years. A decade later I'm still single and childless, so….
I don’t consider myself very superstitious but there are some that I practice. I always knock on wood and throw salt over my shoulder. We always eat black-eyed peas on New Years. My mother has a St. Christopher medal that she always carries when she travels. It was my grandmother’s. She and my grandfather carried it with them when they traveled from Oklahoma to California in the Great Depression, and it brought them home again. I grew up in an oil field community, and people in the industry particularly hands that work on oil rigs are very superstitious. The main superstition that comes to mind is a prohibition on men bringing cherry pies or anything made of cherries or even artificial cherry flavoring for lunch or to a job site. It is considered such bad luck that some rig hands won’t even eat anything with cherries any time. My parents chose not to offer a cherry based desert in their restaurant based on this superstition (they didn’t think anyone would eat it even if it was free).
omg omg I live in Russia and yes Russians are a superstitious lot! I would never dream of having a birthday party before the day of your birthday, and sometimes an inocuous question like “Are we going to that thing on Saturday?” is answered with IF I AM STILL ALIVE THEN. Also never point to yourself while describing someone else’s injury/sickness, if silverware falls to the floor, you will have guests, if your nose is itchy, you will be drunk later, if women sit at the corner of a table they will never get married (HORROR OF HORRORS), if your ears are hot, someone is talking shit about you right now…
I never think I’m superstitious until I actually think about all of the weird things I do. I throw salt over my shoulder, occasionally knock on wood, WILL NEVER open an umbrella indoors or walk under a ladder. My cousin had a baby recently and let everyone know the name she chose ahead of time and it really freaked me out for a reason I couldn’t really specify. I work in a kitchen store and have advised customers not to purchase knives as gifts (which I really don’t think my boss would be okay with).
My nana is quite superstitious and freaks out if 13 people sit at the same table or if somebody opens an umbrella indoors.
I sometimes knock on wood, but it’s kind of not really serious, IDK?
I will do this this year. Hope for me!