Not to get off topic, but what happens on the 13th of October?
I don’t really pay attention to many; I will “knock on wood” occasionally and I have a black cat who crosses my path on a regular basis. But I will not say “shutout” during a hockey game no matter how close to the end it is.
I’ve heard a variation of the dashboard tap is the ceiling tap, and I imagine they’re effectively the same. Never heard of kissing the finger first, but I may have to try it and see how it works for me.
It’s supposed to save you from getting a ticket.
I don’t pay attention to superstitions, really, but I did observe one recently. Someone once told me that when you move, you don’t take the broom with you to the new house, or you’ll take all the bad luck from the old house along with you. It so happens that we moved in January of this year, and 2006 was a truly awful horrible very bad no good year for us. Really, very bad. I felt a little silly doing it, but I did leave the broom behind and buy a new one.
Our second dog died, but we haven’t had any real human tragedy yet this year, so I suppose it’s working, sort of.
The Knights Templar were arrested on that day and the Catholics have been after me ever since.
Granted, that was 1307, but I can hold a grudge too.
I never use a yellow lighter.
I don’t smoke personally, but a lot of people I know always flip the x number cigarette upside down (as to the number, it varies person to person). And then that is the last cigarette they smoke. I wanna say they are called “luckies.”
I have a magpie thing.
One magpaie is bad luck, so I salute it (usually cunningly disguised as adjusting my hair), and say either "Hello Mr Magpie, how’s your wife?
or
“One for Sorrow,
Two for Joy,
Three for a Girl,
Four for a Boy,
Five for Silver,
Six for Gold,
Seven for Secret never to be told.”
No, I don’t know why.
I throw salt over my left shoulder too, but that’s because my grandmother believes in that one and used to make me do it as a small child, so now it is a habit.
I forgot this one, but our version around here is a white Bic. They’re just bad luck.
I’ve thrown salt over my shoulder, although not recently (could be a function of my being less clumsy), but I **will **walk under a ladder and I have **owned **2 black cats. I don’t purposely break mirrors, but if one should come to harm under my care I don’t waste a thought worrying about it. Also, I pick up all money I find on the ground, face up or face down.
When I smoked as a teen, we’d flip the odd one (packs here are usually 25) and smoke it last. That was the ‘wish smoke’.
I recently (in the last year) saw a book with that rhyme in it. The girl in the book saw seven magpies at the beginning. Now I can’t remember the title or what happened so it’s going to bug me.
I’ve noticed that the color varies from region to region. On vacation in Florida I was told pink was bad luck.
I knock on wood now and then, but just in conversation when I say “Knock on wood,” and not out of any deep belief that it will make any difference at all. I’m really not a superstitious guy at all.
Although I do always try to remember to look back over my shoulder when I hear the line “Don’t look back, you can never look back,” in the Don Henley song “The Boys of Summer.” That’s just a silly habit of mine.
I’ll knock on wood when I’ve said something that just seems to be asking for the universe to slap me down for, but I don’t really believe it… i don’t know why I do it.
I have forbidden a coworker of mine from saying “ça se fait bien” (“it goes well” I guess…) when talking about methods I get that I haven’t done before. I had a really bad bout of methods that didn’t work or caused me trouble back in November, and we started the joke that it was all his fault because he told me I wouldn’t have any problems with them. So it’s not so much a superstition as an in-joke, but I do call him on it every time, and make him say it’s an awful horrible method that you can never get to work on the first try!
I don’t take my superstitions seriously, but I do what Khadaji and Kung fu lola do, for the same reason they do.
Another thing I do is avoid any discussion of serious illnesses, lest I summon one that I can’t get rid of. I’m the opposite of a hypochondriac–I never want to believe I could ever be seriously ill.
The only ones I have left are sports-related. Not talking to your pitcher during a no-hitter, don’t step on a bag between innings, touch the goalie’s pads before the game, etc.