What a perfect Friday Five for a Friday the 13th. Originally I was just as confused as hell about it, because I was expecting a Valentine’s Day theme, and instead I was confronted with questions about my values and whether or not I believed in astrology, so I thought someone might have been having some serious romantic problems.

In fact, I try to avoid discussing superstition as much as possible, because I’m so much the irreligious suburban white Canadian that I often find myself making upsetting, dismissive comments about peoples’ core beliefs that I’m afraid to do it any more. Look, Catholics, I didn’t know that you still think the wine actually turns into blood, okay? I thought the Pope said something about that, sort of like how he’s saying Hell isn’t so much a boiling pit of eternal torment full of tortures so foul that they would shatter your very imagination as it is a state of mind, all right? You can quit sending Inquisitors over to my house every weekend, okay? My shoulders are too wide for the Iron Maiden, and the neighbors are starting to ask questions.

Still, because I owe Gwen and I totally biffed on last week’s thing about risk or whatever, I am determined to plunge forward.

1. Are you superstitious?

Yes, and I say that for two reasons:

  1. Because I tend to go on streaks of incredibly good fortune that come to me for no reason at all, and
  2. because if I don’t give credit to those streaks of incredibly good fortune, I’m desperately afraid they’ll go away.

It is possible to believe in the first without believing in the latter. Doing so makes you the kind of person that people describe as “confident”, “happy” or even “opportunistic”, depending on exactly what gets done with all of that goodness that you don’t necessarily deserve. You will go through your life siezing upon the chances that present themselves to you, you will not look back and wonder where they came from. You will advance. If you’re not too careful, people might refer to you as a prick.

If you listen to them, you might ask yourself the question, “What the hell is their deal? What are they calling me a prick for? Just because I happened to be there when that lady fell out of the window and into my arms, which caused me to stumble sideways and bump that incredibly wealthy man out of the path of a dump truck and into the path of the woman he would eventually call his wife? Are they trying to say I don’t deserve the eternal admiration of everyone who witnessed this freak event, despite the fact that I didn’t really do anything? What… what could this mean?”

And then you’re like the rest of us.

Superstition is bad self-esteem carried to supernatural lengths.

2. What extremes have you heard of someone going to in the name of superstition?

I was listening last year to a radio interview with a Toronto Blue Jays player who had a particular lucky hat, lucky wristband, lucky tee-shirt and lucky haircut. He had a velcro team wallet that his grandmother gave him when he was nine or ten years old, and that he still used for all of his finances to this very day. He didn’t think it was even slightly strange that he might go into Banana Republic or something and buy a $500 shirt with a wallet that his grandma probably got at Zellers.

Famous and Rich Baseball Player: Hi, I’ll take this shirt and these ties, please.
Store Clerk: Why, Famous Baseball Player! Good to see you again. Did you get all the help you needed with these?
Baseball Player: Yes, thank you. Always a pleasure.
Clerk: Very good! Okay… that will come to… five hundred billion trillion dollars. Will that be charge, or…?
Baseball Player: Yes, thanks. Now, where’s my platinum card… sssshhhhhrrrrrrrrip!
Store Clerk: I… uh.
Baseball Player: Oh, you’re right… it’s probably in the other flap. ssshhhrrrrrip! Yes, here we go.
Store Clerk: ….
Baseball Player: It’s my wallet, isn’t it?
Store Clerk: Oh yes.

Now, this particular example just happens to be adorable, because of the fact that not only must this guy look like a six year-old buying candy whenever he shops, but that he still treasures a wallet he got from his dear old grandmother. This is clearly more heartfelt and genuine than a basket of puppies with Valentines all over them, even if at its root it’s pretty weird. If the guy was wearing a lucky Mickey Mouse tee-shirt that his grandmother gave him, it’d probably be a pretty heated discussion about what’s more upsetting — the fact that he’s still wearing it, or that it would be worn so thin that his nipples would be clearly visible at all times.

It’s not that I don’t understand the theory of lucky objects, but I think that athletes carry it into a bizarre world. I wear my watch every day and I haven’t died or suffered from impotence, but I’m not prepared to make the leap that associates these facts to each other. If a baseball player really thinks that his disgusting sweaty wristband that he’s worn since college is going to help him hit more home runs, then I suppose it’s true from his point of view. It doesn’t mean, though, that if I leave my watch at home when I go to the convenience store, I’m going to lose my erection and crash into a fire truck.

3. Believer or not, what’s your favorite superstition?

I am a big supporter of the spilled salt ritual, which goes like this:

  1. Accidentally spill salt.
  2. Quickly grab pinch of salt and toss it over shoulder.
  3. Realize that you don’t remember if it’s the left or right shoulder that you’re supposed to toss it over, so you toss it over whatever shoulder you didn’t toss it before.
  4. Wear an expression of innocent surprise when your housemate or significant other expresses surprise at all the salt on the floor, now deeply embedded in their bare feet.

There are so many things that are great about this that I can’t quite figure out which I like best. Is it the implication that by spilling salt, you are somehow unleashing a terrible evil? Is it the moral undertone that wasting something as valuable as salt will bring down terrible misfortune on you? Is it the insane solution of wasting further salt by heaving it over your shoulder? Is it the quiet, tiny belief that you tossing salt in the eyes of the devil? I can’t even tell you.

Suffice to say, I still do it. And I do it in a quick, quiet and confident way that even the most rational, scientific people I know will observe it in action and let it pass without comment.

Everyone has their shit to take care of, after all.

4. Do you believe in luck? If yes, do you have a lucky number/article of clothing/ritual?

I do believe in luck. Very many of the developments in my life depended entirely on luck. A number of my superhuman feats of bad judgement have been reversed by incredibly good luck, even though it didn’t seem that way at the time.

I don’t think that I can attribute my luck to a number, or a shirt, or jewellery, or a particular way I tie my shoes. I treat luck like a particularly fickle and egotistical patron, one who will immediately withdraw its favor if I don’t pay it all the proper credit and tribute.

Thinking that luck is something that can see me, hear me and evaluate my motivations like some kind of Egyptian God is probably no less irrational than locating all my fortunes in a twenty year-old velcro walled, but at least it keeps me modest.

5. Do you believe in astrology? Why or why not?

I would believe astrology a lot more if the daily horoscopes weren’t so goddamned wrong all the time.

I mean, this is today’s horoscope:

Taurus (April 21 — May 20)
You can lose your sense of direction. You can feel lost in a lost world. You can lose your faith in our leaders. But whatever you do, do not lose faith in yourself. Don’t assume that anything is wrong or that you have made some big mistake. All is as it should be.

This isn’t a divination of my future. This is advice, and it’s not particularly interesting advice. It’s like someone gazing at my star charts carefully for hours, formulating delicate calculations as they ponder the movements of the heavens, until finally they look up at me and say, “You probably shouldn’t eat glass. It can be really, really bad for you. My cousin used to do it at rodeos, and last year he had to get a colostomy bag. I’m just saying.”

It’s not that the content of horoscopes isn’t valid, because explaining to me the joys of having faith in myself or the benefits of dollar-cost averaging is all very useful, but I fail to see the connection to my birth signs.

Besides, Tauruses aren’t superstitious that way. Everyone knows that.