When are you allowed to make a wish?

In My Humble Opinion
1

There are few occasions when just about everyone knows you may make a wish (as opposed to doing something for general good luck), such as:

-Blowing out birthday candles

-Upon sighting the first star of the night

-Blowing your own eyelash off of someone else’s finger

-Breaking apart a wishbone

Other occasions seem a bit more obscure, the knowledge of which seem to travel in smaller social circles. Two that I’ve heard of that don’t seem universal:

-When the clasp of a necklace works its way all the way to the pendant. A wish is made when the clasp is moved back to the back of the neck.

-When a “permanent” leather anklet breaks off.

What are some others that you have heard? How widespread are they?

(Not that I believe in this stuff, but it’s interesting from a folklore point of view.)

2

If you see a shooting star.

3

Blowing belly button lint off a finger (similar to the eyelash thing).

4

Dropping a coin into a wishing well.

5

I’ve never heard that one before. Interesting!

6

-Blowing on a dandelion puff. You have to make a wish and blow, and get all the fluffy seeds off in one blow for it to come true.

-Hold your breath and make a wish when going through a tunnel. You have to hold your breath all the way through to the end. Thankfully we only have one tunnel here, and it’s short. …then again I might have only learned this from “Tiny Toon Adventures: How I Spent My Summer Vacation” when I was younger, but I still do it anyway.

7

When you’re driving in a car and a train passes by over you.

8

When you rub a lamp containing a genie. You get 3.
When a digital clock reads 11:11.
When you find a four leaf clover.

9

Just 11:11? Growing up, we did it for 1:11, 2:22, 3:33, etc.

10

Yep.

Yep.

Really? That was always a notable time among my friends, but we never thought of it as a wishing occasion. How widespread is that?

11

Now look at how many wishing occassions you’ve missed out on.

I don’t know how widespread it is, but many people I’ve talked to have heard of it.

12

Actually, no – in the oldest version we have, Aladdin gets unlimited wishes. As long as he retains the lamp.

13

I was wondering if anyone else knew that one. I’d always suspected my mom of making it up. Our regional variation is that you have to touch the ceiling of the car when you go under.

14

I also heard about that one from my mom…not from anyone else. Apparently she and all her siblings did it when they were in cars that went under trains. But I never heard it in pop culture/from anyone else.

15

You had digital clocks when you were growing up?

See, that’s why I never heard of that one. It kinda loses something on the old analogue models.

I also never heard of the train one, or the eyelash/lint one, or the necklace, or anklet, or the tunnel.

Boy, no wonder I lead such a deprived life. :wink:

16

By middle school, it was common. This would have been around '96 and onward, I suppose.

17

I always associate the train thing with Russia because I had never heard it before I went to Russia, but everyone there new it. It also counts if you are on a boat under a bridge and a train is crossing.

18

I’m not allowed to make wishes :frowning:

19

Enough so that it’s a scene in the novel I’m working on. Of course the character’s grandfather taught her to wish for a rival family’s downfall on those occasions :wink:

20

That’s how we did it as kids, up in Montreal. For the school bus, we could touch a window instead, but with our fingers crossed.

We did the digital clock thing too, making a wish at 3:33, 4:44, etc., but we had to touch something blue and we had to be finished saying or thinking the wish before the clock changed. My brother, age 22, just did this today.