Don't Take Me Seriously - Book - Page 152
Friday the 13th — bad boy or boo-rah?
I
s it unlucky to rework
your Friday the 13th column from last year? Let’s
find out:
As with last year, in 2011,
we’ve only got one Friday the
13th.
Yes, it is today, my friends.
So, after you finish your
morning paper, just climb
back in bed and pull the covers over your head. Don’t get
up. Don’t go to work. Don’t
go out. Do nothing, because
it’s dangerous out there.
Or so some say.
They have a name for this
kind of thinking. It’s called
paraskevidekatriaphobia, and
it’s defined as the morbid, irrational fear of Friday the
13th.
But is this fear really so irrational?
Well, last year we noted
a study in the British Medical Journal that showed that,
even though fewer people
chose to drive their cars on
Friday the 13th, the number
of hospital admissions due
to vehicular accidents was
significantly higher than on
“normal” Fridays.
However, I’ve had many
months to think about this,
and I now figure this statistic is probably the result of
Jim
WALKER
DON’T TAKE ME SERIOUSLY
the careful, fearful drivers
taking the bus — and, thusly, leaving the reckless drivers more room to get up to
speed.
Either way, there aren’t
any other stats to support
Friday the 13th being unlucky. So the bad luck is really all in your head.
The problem is, what is in
your head can manifest itself in reality. What really makes the day unlucky
is the worrying about it,
the distraction caused by it.
Say, like double-taking on
the calendar while you are
pouring your hot morning
coffee and — oops, bad luck
already.
Adding to this distraction
effect is the bad-expectation
effect. If you are leery of the
day, you are putting out the
negative energy that draws in
misfortune.
And going a step further,
you might even see misfortune in what is really good
fortune. Say, ladies, like cursing your broken high heel
and not realizing that broken
heel kept you from being in
the crosswalk when the guy
ran the red light.
Now, when it comes to this
Friday the 13th superstition,
it’s not the “Friday” that is the
problem, as there is a Friday
every week. And, apparently,
it’s not the 13th of the month
that’s bad, since every month
has one.
As we noted before, the
purveyors of paraskevidekatriaphobia must have decided that no one would buy into
every month having an unlucky day, so they pulled
things back to the irregular
occurrence when the 13th of
the month happens on a Friday.
But what about that number 13? Why does it get such
a bad rap?
I mean, the shunning of 13
is so widespread that many
cities do not have a 13th
Street or a 13th Avenue. And
many buildings don’t have a
13th floor.
This is just silly. If you
have more than 12 floors, you
have a 13th floor. It’s mathe-
matically impossible to avoid.
And naming the unlucky
13th floor “14” is like Dracula calling himself Count Alucard. Who you gonna fool?
Now, the “why” of 13 being considered unlucky
comes from legends and lore.
For instance, Loki, the evil
Norse god, crashed a party
of 12 other gods and incited
a killing. There were 13 people at the Last Supper. There
are 13 witches in a coven, and
so on.
I mean, give anything 13
parts, and if you try hard
enough, you can connect it to
the dark side.
Take the 12 days of Christmas, for instance. Add a 13th
day of Christmas and you’ve
got ... well, for one thing, a
really bad TV movie from
1985.
But you can go the other way, as well. Consider the
baker’s dozen.
There are 13 doughnuts in
a baker’s dozen, and that’s a
sweet deal.
There were 13 original colonies that formed the United
States. Maybe this was bad
luck for the British, but it was
good luck for us Yanks.
And what if those Founding Fathers had been over-
ly superstitious? They might
have set the cutoff at 12 colonies, leaving Rhode Island to
pound sand — or, instead, labeled Rhode Island the 14th
colony, which would have just
been weird, and would have
caused everyone to go searching for the “lost colony,” like
they did for Roanoke.
And then there are 13s that
fall into the “it depends” category.
There are 13 playing cards
in a suit. This is lucky, if you
win at cards, and unlucky, if
you lose — so, in this case,
whether something is unlucky or not depends on, well
... luck.
And, finally, we have one
“prominent” celebrity who
believes 13 is good luck.
Singer Taylor Swift actually
paints the number 13 on her
wrist before each of her performances, as a good luck
charm.
Of course, you’ll only notice that if you have the bad
luck to be at a Taylor Swift
concert.
So get up and get out there.
This is going to be a great
day.
Comment at jwalker@thesignal.com, @DontSeriously
or @SCVSignal.
