It’s time for another Global Writing Challenge prompt. Our current membership consists of Deb’s World, Suzy Turner, Within a World of My Own, Once Upon a Time, Happily Ever After, Cat’s Wire, Coffee and Cocktails at the Casa, and me. Cat picked this month’s prompt. I know Cat will have a very good reason for her choice, too! Please do visit everyone’s blogs. I really think everyone does such an amazing job with the different prompts every month. We get a wide assortment of perspectives, too. As we consider ourselves a global group, if you’d like to join us, please let one of us know. We’d love to have more people from all over the planet! There’s also a link party at the end of this post!
The Global Writing Challenge is continuing in 2027. We will have prompts for that next month. If you’d like to join us, here are the prompts for next month:
- December – Why I Blog
Grab a beverage and a comfy chair…
When Cat suggested superstition as the November prompt, I wasn’t sure what I’d write about. I don’t think I’m particularly superstitious. Then, I started thinking about some of my more…shall we say…idiosyncratic tendencies. And, sure enough, when I googled superstitions, some of them popped up!
The first one…
So, let’s get some of the easy ones taken care of first. When I was a kid, my dad’s parents lived in a cute little town called Sherwood. It was in southern Michigan, and we were there a lot. My little brother and I would often stay for a week or two with my grandparents. Now that I think about it, we stayed with Grandpa and Grandma Rose a lot. Hmmm…I wonder if that means anything. But, I digress. We would often walk downtown. I have to chuckle because that meant about four or five blocks. There was a side street we liked to sneak down even though we knew it was off limits. Why, you ask? We had convinced ourselves a run-down home (think Norman Bates’ house) was the home of a witch. And, the sidewalks on that street were cracked and buckled by the roots of trees. We were always warning each other, “Don’t step on a crack, or you’ll break your mother’s back.”
Next…
According to African and European folklore, these cracks in the earth’s surface (in our case, a sidewalk) could be possible portals “to the realm of the supernatural, for both good and ill. To step on those cracks might be to invite or release unwelcome spirits into the world ready to do one harm (source).” Now, neither my brother nor I knew this, but we still skipped over those cracks. If you’re interested in superstitions, the source I linked has a few more.
And, this one…
Another superstition I avoid whenever possible, and it’s always possible to avoid is walking under a ladder. I just don’t do it. It doesn’t matter who is on the ladder, where it is, or what its purpose is. I will not walk under a ladder. I will cross a street before going under one. Seems this has its roots in Christianity:
“The superstition of not wanting to walk under a ladder also has roots in Christian symbolism: the “Holy Trinity” of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit led to an association of the number three with something sacred. The triangle, with its three sides, came to be regarded as sacred as well, and a ladder of course forms a triangle, so, naturally, to walk under that ladder would be to destroy the sanctity of the Trinity and thus incur punishment.” And, once again, I did not know that. I just knew I didn’t need any bad luck.
But not really…
The third one is crossing my fingers for good luck. I suppose this is a bit of a cheat because I honestly don’t believe good luck comes from crossing my fingers. I do, however, yell at Nigel should he cross more than two fingers as I’ve heard crossing more invites bad luck!
A common one…
There are strange little things I do find myself doing these days. If I spill salt, I do pick some up and throw it over my left shoulder. Once again, according to the same source, when da Vinci painted The Last Supper, Judas Iscariot can be seen spilling salt. Since Judas is the bad guy, spilling salt is a bad thing. In other cultures, people thought the devil was standing just over your left shoulder, so you threw salt at him. I’m not exactly sure what that did unless the devil is a bit like a slug. “Still, others say that the sheer value of salt alone in ancient times led to the belief that to spill it was to incur bad fortune (like among Romans), requiring a corresponding ritual or act of penance to prevent worse loss from occurring.”
A belief…
This isn’t so much a superstition as a belief. I don’t often talk about my faith on the blog. For one thing, I think faith is a personal thing, and secondly, I’m not going to condemn anyone for believing or not believing. When all is said and done, this is a fashion blog. But, I do believe the devil is constantly waiting on us to say or do the wrong thing. I often warn Nigel not to wish for something he really doesn’t want because the devil is more than happy to make those things happen. Is this Biblically based? I have no idea because…gasp…I’ve never read the Bible from beginning to end. And, I’m not even going to google it because it wouldn’t change anything.
Cemeteries…
Let’s talk cemeteries for just a little minute. When my dad died, I was just 16. My mom, as you can imagine, was devastated. She was 42 and had three kids still at home. She would often wake me up and ask if I wanted to go to Dad’s grave. We would go, visit with him for a bit, cry, and then go home. If you’ve never been in a cemetery on a quiet night at midnight, you don’t know what you’re missing. Our last house was just south of an old cemetery. The graves were from the 17th and 18th century. The land our neighborhood was built on had once been a farm, and this was the family cemetery. It didn’t bother me at all, knowing there was a cemetery just a few yards from our house.
A little history…
Now, though, I do kinda wonder if all of Nigel’s bad luck hasn’t come from that. I wonder if there wasn’t another cemetery situated where our house (or the area close to our house) was. Why do I wonder that? Well, Nigel used to climb telephone poles for a living. He wore those spikey things on his work boots and would shimmy up and down those poles like nobody’s business. We resided our house up north one summer. The south side of the house was huge. Nigel rented scaffolding to reach it. He would scurry up and down that scaffolding like it was nothing. I had to turn away after handing him things. We also had a staircase he would regularly paint. He’d put a ladder at the bottom of the stairs and one at the top. He had a big old board he’d put between the two and then he’d paint. Because he knew it bothered me, he’d bounce up and down on that daggone board! That’s the Nigel I knew before we moved to the Big House. The cemetery is behind those trees in the photo below.
Then again…
Within weeks (maybe even days) of moving into the Big House, Nigel fell and broke his right arm, right below the ball part of the socket. The surgeon (who is our current surgeon) said it was the worst possible place to break an arm. He had to have two surgeries because the plate inserted during the first surgery came loose. They found it during x-rays because he spiked a fever. Then, my favorite surgeon of all time, Dr. D repaired that, putting in a huge plate and several screws. Within a few years, Nigel broke not one, but both ankles! The second one was during Covid! He walked around on the first broken ankle for six or seven weeks before consenting to go to the walk in clinic. By then, the bone had begun to heal. The second time, he missed that last step coming down the stairs and knew, immediately, he’d broken something. I would sit in the car, and he would go to his appointments. He would call me, put his phone on speaker so we could communicate with the doctor at the same time. Then, the man gets AVN. So, can you blame me? I think there was something about the Big House than was just not for us. I only hope the new little family living there is OK.
That’s a wrap…
I guess, when you get right down to it, I’m a little more superstitious than I thought I was. There are many I don’t think I believe in, but sometimes, things happen. Then, you just have to wonder, right? Does that make it a superstition or just a coincidence?
Thank you!
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What others are saying…
Suzy “writes about superstitions, black cats, lucky omens and why we still follow mysterious old beliefs even when we don’t believe in them.”
Cat “is talking about tree spirits, bog bodies, and Groucho Marx.”
Sally “discusses the Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit phenomenon and shares some bunny-themed goodness from her closet.”
Amy “questions if she is a superstitious person and which superstitions, if any, she follows.”
Leslie “shares a few superstitions that have adorned her life. Hope you will stop by to learn more.”
Debbie “is sharing an Australian take on the old rhyme ‘one for sorrow, two for joy’.“
And, now, it’s your turn!
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Ooh this made me think. Not sure that I have too many superstitions.
That was a really interesting post. I wonder if we are in some way conditioned to start out non-superstitious, but tend to get more suspicious and therefore a little superstitious – just from hearing all of those rhymes or warnings – if things happen which will always be the case because, well, life is just life. Why do so many people, me included, say that it can’t hurt to do some of those things?
I definitely remember the “don’t walk on a crack you’ll break your mother’s back” thing growing up.. and that was so tricky as our old school playground was a blacktop that was not in good shape! I had no ides where that saying came from though and the same with walking under a ladder. I just assumed it was because something might fall on you and was more a safety thing than anything else. My best friend growing up lived next door to a cemetery and we spent lots of time there– riding bikes all around it in middle school and as teens we’d go out at night (probably not midnight) and usually ended up spooking one another out somehow. Funny enough my father’s family had a large plot in the corner that abutted her house so sometimes I’d pop in and say “hi.”
Isn’t it funny how the same superstitions are the same no matter what country you’re in Marsha?? I find it strange that we do similar things regardless of how we’ve been brought up, like salt over the left shoulder! This was a very interesting prompt and it seems we all have some of those old superstitious bones in our bodies, even if we don’t think do.
A great insight into your life too, which is always fun!
Deb from debs-world.com
It’s funny because we are all a little more superstitious than we first thought when we heard of the prompt, maybe.
Oh Nigel has had a lot! It sounds like he was pretty brave and daring. I once heard that kids who are more daring break more bones.
I am too chicken to go to a cemetery at midnight now but I had a friend who lived in front of one and at slumber parties we went out there.