Sort of related to green_bladder’s…
I will not wear any race gear of my favorite driver while watching a NASCAR race on TV. At the track or a taped replay is OK.
The last time I broke that rule was February 18, 2000.
Eh, 2001…
I use this big cup to fill up the baby’s tub. The perfect amount of water to put in would be 13 cupfuls, but I always do 15. Not 14, because I may have counted wrong and it might really be 13 that I’ve put in. I don’t observe the “13 is bad luck” rule in any other area of my life.
When I was in college, I tossed my sorority pin in the ashtray of my car. It’s been in the ashtray of whatever car I’ve owned ever since. If I don’t have it, I’ll have a car accident (which I’ve never had, so it must work!).
I’ve developed a habit of always tossing a coin into a wishing well.
I’ve also found that if something good is about to happen to me (a date or a raise for example) that if I tell someone about it, it never happens.
Okay, this is kind of a bad one, and one I’d like to break myself of.
When I was young, I always felt that my dad never had anything nice to say. No matter how good things were, he was always super-critical. Did a lot to screw up my self-esteem. It wasn’t until I was 19 that I learned there was actually a reason for this- his mother had instilled in him the superstition that if you talk about things in a positive way, they’re destined to go wrong. Man, if I’d just known it was a superstition, not a general need to rag on me and my brothers… But that’s a different kettle of fish.
What bugs me is that I’m finding that now, I do it, too. I can never talk about something good without qualifying it with a negative, no matter how small. (Example- 'The meal was great! I didn’t like… Er… The napkins… But the meal was fantastic.") I’m -really- trying to break myself of this one. So far, no luck.
Good on you for trying to break that one **ArrMatey![\b], that would drive me bananas if I knew you.
I knock on wood and I say hello to magpies. Mainly because if you have done it once you kind of have to keep at it. I also avoid “tempting fate”.
I doubt it - my mother never ever let us put shoes on the bed - she said it was bad luck. My family is Indian. Another one concerning shoes is that your shoes should never be left upside down. Don’t know why, but it was drilled into us from a very young age.
Next time, just grab the map out of the glove compartment and knock on that. It’s wood pulp. Good enough for me!
I am not supersticious, but I find some of the ideas fun. So I throw spilt salt over my left shoulder, and knock on wood, when appropriate. But I also walk under ladders whenever I get the chance (unless someone is on the ladder painting or cleaning, obviously).
Oh, man, I can’t believe I’m telling this… I am a little superstitious about wearing something again if I had good luck in it once. In that I’ll wear it until the cows come home. I’m a criminal defense lawyer- a public defender- and about 8 years ago, I had this incredible winning streak in court. I absomlutely couldn’t lose a case. I had a favorite suit at the time- it was an Ellen Tracy fuscia (bright pink, for all you guys) suit that fit me perfectly and looked fabulous on me. I wore it for every closing argument.
Several months into The Streak, I lost 50 lbs. THE SUIT DIDN'T FIT!! I had it altered, but it looked like crap. So I had to make do with new suits, none of them fuscia. I still managed to win a few cases, though.
Fast-forward to 2003. I'm trying fewer cases- go figure, I'm getting really good plea offers- and I start wearing my shoulder-length hair in a bun. Only because I don't want to have to worry if it's getting flat and disgusting during the day. Again, I don't lose anything. I get a hung jury in one murder case, and an acquittal in the next murder case.
They'll be playing ice hockey in hell before I wear my hair down in front of a jury again. And no, I don't REALLY think that has anything to do with it- but to quote Kevin Costner in "Bull Durham", "Ya gotta respect the streak".I’m not superstitious, but I do have rituals.
For example, if I’m getting ready for a big presentation, a horse show, or other important event, I have a routine and a certain way of getting ready and getting dressed. It’s not as if I think something bad will happen if I don’t do it that particular way, it’s more a way of getting myself mentally prepared and putting on my game face.
I refuse to say the ‘Scottish Play’ in a theatre. Or most anywhere for that matter. If somebody does manage to slip it out in the theatre, he must be spun around three times while saying ‘Angels and ministers of grace defend us.’
You may scoff. But its the law.
It’s bad luck to be superstitious.
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My husband and I went to stay with family over the Thanksgiving holiday. On the trip back, a car smashed into ours, causing serious damage to both the car and my husband’s back. Both car and back are fixed over the next few months, though.
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My husband and I went to stay with family over the Thanksgiving holiday. On the trip there, a car smashed into ours, totaling our car.
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My husband and I do not go anywhere for Thanksgiving. We park the car Wednesday night and do not move it again until Monday morning. This is probably our new Thanksgiving tradition.
I tend to fear that the things that are supposed to bring you good luck will end up bringing me bad luck. I feel that if I carry a rabbit’s foot around, for example, something bad will happen to me. My seventh birthday didn’t go too well, and seventh grade was by far my worst year in school. My first car lasted for seven years before it had too many problems to keep driving, so all of this is probably where my feelings about good-luck symbols having the opposite effect on me started.
My grand mother was very superstitious - of German/Hungarian/Austrian heritage. I still follow a couple of hers. (I do also knock on wood, but is more important to say it than to actually find real wood and I have lucky articles of clothing, too.)
It is bad luck to flip the calendar in advance, because you are tempting fate to not let you live to see that day. Not sure I believe it, but it isn’t that hard not to do it, so I don’t, just in case. I once told a friend about that superstition, and then he had a ton of bad luck during the next 24 hours, so I made a believer out of him, too, but then he was already really superstitious. He avoids the number 13 and all that.
It is bad to put the loaf of bread upside down, as that means someone you know will die. The weird thing about that one was, I first heard when I was 12. My mother had a loaf of bread upside down, my paternal grandmother saw it, and flipped out, explaining the superstition. The next day, my mother’s father died unexpectedly of a heart attack. Weird, but another one that is so easy not to do, I would rather observe it, just in case.
I wonder if the shoes upside down is a similar superstition to the bread?
There was also one that if a wild bird gets into your house, it means someone who lives there will die. I was told this when a cardinal got in my house. A week later my pet rabbit died - unrelated. Not like I have much control over that one, though.
She used to have a little saying in German that said something about laughing on Friday meant you would cry on Saturday. She said this whenever we kids would get slap happy and laugh like crazy. I never believed that one, though. I can’t even remember how it goes properly. I have tried to find it documented somewhere and can’t. If anyone knows such little rhyme in German, it would be greatly appreciated if you reminded me how it goes. 
I practice a sort of Folk Shintoism that i’ve cobbled together and Some of my ritual/superstitions are :
I must wash my mouth out every morning at least three times( Think swish and spit) More is better, but only in multiples of threes. This gets rid of evil spirits that may have gotten into my mouth while I was asleep.
I toss salt around when I have bad luck to suck up the bad luck. I sweep it out the door and throw it in the lake.
During a thunder storm I bang on my drum three times to keep the thunder god from making mischief on my home.
Occasionally I leave little bowls of sake out for the little Kami (spirits) that are local to my home. They always disappear, but I think the squirrells are getting drunk for free here.
I won’t go out during a lunar eclipse except to look at it. (evil spirits, demons and hungry ghosts have reign).
If they are still in a recognizeable state, i’ll pull coyotes who have been killed on the road to shelter and set a marker with a prayer. (We scoffed at the Native American trickster-god Coyote once and had a bad luck streak that didn’t end until we apologised.)
I wish on stars, toss salt and knock on wood, and TheOnlySaneOne is correct about Mr. Will’s shortest and bloodiest play. You also can’t quote any of it in the theatre if it’s not the play being performed. Which is hard because it’s SO quotable!
My grandmother was very superstitious and believed that thunderstorms would turn around and come back if they knew she was in the house, so she’d hide in the closet during storms. Also, putting salt across doorways and window seals will keep evil out, and putting salt in the corners of rooms will clean out bad spirits.
When I clean my mouth out (normally during toothbrushing), I tend to use at least 3 mouthfuls of water to make sure it’s clean.
Mirrors don’t belong in bedrooms unless it’s above a built-in vanity… but those generally should be covered on certain occasions. It’s just generally better to not have a vanity in the bedroom that’s in view of the bed.
Laying on your left side or your stomach helps you sleep better. (It also helps digestion if you sleep on your left side.)
Bedroom doors should be closed when people are not in the room, and toilet seats should be left covered. Shower curtains are better open unless they’re drying after someone’s recent shower.
I always hold my breath while driving by a graveyard. If for some reason I do breathe while going by, I have to cough to get the ghosts out of my lungs.