If you step on a crack, you'll break your momma's back!

I was looking at the calender yesterday, and realized two things. One, we  move in less than three weeks....which I don't have to tell you is pretty scary, and second our first night there is a Saturday.  Why is this important, well it's important to me because my grandmother on my mothers side would never approve of that.

If my grandmother knew our first night in our new home would be on a Saturday, she would be rolling in her grave.  She was very superstitious, and Saturday being your first night in a new home is a very very bad thing to do in her books.  She believed you could move your stuff in, but you could not sleep there.  If I remember correctly, her belief was that if you were to do this your stay in the house would be short.  Well, we moved into the house we are currently living in on a Friday and this has been the shortest of stays in my adult life.  I don't think I have ever not seen a lease out to the end, until now.  That tells me that my grandmothers little superstition is just an old wives tale.  Aren't most of them? 

This made me think about all the other things we believe in, just because someone told us it was bad luck if we didn't or did do something.  We all know the ones like, don't let a back cat cross your path, which by the way I have never really been clear about.  Is the cat not supposed to cross the path your are walking and currently haven't gotten to yet, or is that black cat not supposed to walk the path you have already walked?  This has been a life long confusion for me.  Then there is the don't walk under a ladder.  I don't know what walking under a ladder will do to you, but apparently we aren't to do it.  There are also the lesser  known beliefs, like a friend of mine from India believed that you should never whistle at night.  I don't know why, but she would get very upset with me if I did it.  She also believed that you could not pass a knife to anyone, you had to put the knife down in front of them and they are to pick it up from there.  I believe she said that if you were to do this then there would be a fight between the two people involved in the knife pass soon after doing so.  I had never heard of that one.  There are people who believe that you should never sleep in the moons light, that it can't be directly on you.  I don't know what you do if you happen to be homeless, I guess find a cardboard box to lay in so the moons rays don't get you.  My grandmother on my mother's side also believed that if you forgot something after you left the house and went back to get it, you had to wait outside the house and count to ten before you can leave again.  I don't know what would happen to you if you did not count to ten, but it wasn't good I know that.   The mother of a friend of mine believed you couldn't take an old broom into a new home, it had something about bringing the old dirt into the future.  I have always kind of believed that, and have always started off in any new house with a new broom, but it has more to do with just using the opportunity of a move to get a new broom.  I have always left the old one in the old place so I have something to use to clean with after everything is out, and then just leaving it there for the new tenants. 

Isn't if funny how we go through life believing in mystical things like luck, or chance, or superstitions.   I have to wonder where all this come from.  I find it fascinating that the same people who believe in God, also have these strong superstitions, shouldn't they be thinking in a more Divine intervention kind of thing?  I don't know.   I think that we all have our "lucky socks" or  ways of doing things that make us feel better about certain things, I know I do.  I don't think I am all the superstitious by nature, but there are things that I just feel like if I don't do them and something bad happens then I end up wishing I had just done it the way the superstition said to do it.  Those chain emails freak me out. I hate sending trash to 25 of my closest friends, but it says really bad things will happened to me if I don't.  What do you do in that case, piss off 25 of your friends because you have now put them in the exact same situation you are currently in, or do you take your chances.  I have gotten really good at picking them out in subject lines in email now, so I delete before I ever read the thing.  I don't want to piss of the people in my life, but I sure as heck will do that before letting and impending tragedy come my way!!

I hope that this new place is a place we stay in for a very long time, but if it turns out to not be my logical mind knows that it has nothing to do with which night of the week I spent my first night there.  I respect other's beliefs and I accept that we don't all think the same, but when it comes to silly superstitions, in most cases I don't put much weight in them....and now watch, I have said that now and some big piece of a plane will come hurling out of the sky and strike me dead......