Sunday, July 13, 2008

Don't Step On The Cracks

I don't believe in superstitions but I've had a few over the years. Usually of the sort, "if I don't throw this piece of paper directly in the bin, I've got a terminal illness." I've never missed unless I've tried the old "if I throw this piece of paper directly into the bin, I've got a terminal illness." OK, I can change my mind when the paper's in mid-flight.

When I was a young teenager I had a book written by an author who'd died of a terminal illness. I couldn't bring myself to read it and kept it on top of the wardrobe, back picture cover down so I couldn't catch whatever had killed him.

In recent years my main one involves my funeral tie. If my navy blue funeral tie falls off its tie rack, it means someone is going to die. It does fall off occasionally, but as yet the funeral I'm expecting to attend in the near future hasn't happened.

This proves to me that superstition is nonsense.

I've also yet to be convinced that the future can be "read" by "chosen" people. A work colleague of mine has just been to see a Tarot reader. She was told that there are going to be six redundancies at work in August and that in the end our department will be one of the last ones to go.

This is patently nonsense. It's not August, it's September!

12 comments:

  1. I never walk under ladders. It's not that I'm superstitious. I just don't fancy ending up sprawled beneath fifteen stone of lardy windowcleaner plus his bucket of tepid water if he decides to choose the moment I'm passing to take an unscheduled dive.

    (And I don't entirely trust my lucky rabbit's foot to protect me from this kind of thing.)

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  2. I'll bet you have a lucky pair of knickers.

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  3. Frumps - I have a superstition about avoiding scaffolders.

    MJ - Yes, but they're 26 years old and 32 inch waist.

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  4. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for you Geoff.

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  5. You don't need people like that at work. You should have strangled her with your funeral tie.

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  6. Kaz - Thank you. No news so far, touch wood.

    Murph - Going to work is like being on the set of Psychic TV. My grandmother's nagging me something rotten.

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  7. One of my sisters was like you about books and illness. If anyone sneezed, her first comment was a panicky "is it catching?" She grew out of it during her teens.

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  8. If there was a picture of a dead person in the newspaper, I couldn't sleep directly above it, even though it was downstairs and I was upstairs. Now I'm blase and have loads of pictures of dead people all over the house.

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  9. "an author who'd died of a terminal illness"

    Well it would be, wouldn't it?

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  10. I think it was a long one, too.

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  11. This tarot reader... did they work in HR?

    That's very specific information. I think I'd rather just keep with the 'ooo I see a tall, dark and handsome stranger in your future' type guff.

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  12. The tarot reader was a professional. It was all bad news. There was no Brucie bonus.

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