DESPITE considering yourself a rational, intelligent person, you cling to utterly stupid superstitions like these:
Don’t walk under a ladder
People warn you not to walk under a ladder because it might bring bad luck. However, luck is the least of your worries when there’s a risk of hungover builder dropping a hammer on you. This isn’t so much a superstition as solid health and safety advice.
Never break a mirror
If you a break a mirror you get seven years bad luck. But what about people who work in tips or glass recycling centres who spend every day throwing mirrors about and smashing the shit out of them? They aren’t living continually cursed lives, unless you count only being able to get a job at the tip or a glass recycling centre.
Knocking on wood
Apparently, if you tap against a piece of dead tree, you protect yourself from bad luck. Why? The answer is lost in the mists of time. And the vast majority of furniture that people tap on now is MDF-plastic composite, not even really wood. Which hasn’t led to any appreciable decrease in people’s luck making this superstition bollocks.
Lucky underwear
Some people believe a pair of lucky underwear can help them get laid. In reality they’re not charmed, they’re just a slightly cleaner pair with the elastic still intact. If you’re relying on a pair of pants to help you persuade someone into bed, you need to do some serious work on your personality.
‘Break a leg’
Actors have all sorts of superstitions and rituals around their jobs because they’re wankers. One of them is never saying ‘good luck’ to someone about to go on stage. Unfortunately their melodramatic bullshit has crossed over into normal life and people stick to it rigidly, because heaven forbid something should go wrong and undermine the theatrical merit of your child’s Year 6 production of Jack and the Beanstalk.
