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We have all heard the Old Wives Tales, "they say" things and the superstitions.
List at least 3, you can list more if you want, of things you have heard.
"Find a penny, pick it up, and all day long you'll have good luck." I didn't understand when I was younger why this was good luck; now I do, as it's a rather dated/old expression, from when a penny was good luck and not a pocketweight. This one reaches me; I tend to pick up found pennies even if I have no earthly use for a penny. (It doesn't say that you can't put it back down, though, and I figure dropping it into the charity jars at the grocery store is a tiny beginning of good luck for someone else, too.)
"Step on a crack, break your mother's back." A child's superstition. I believed it wholeheartedly about half the time when I was young; I'd carefully dodge cracks. On the other hand, the rest of the time I didn't even think about it. I understood, at some level, that I was humoring it, I think, when it bugged me.
"If a black cat crosses your path, it's bad luck." Especially if it's the ever-pushy Basta...but anyway....
And a fourth one for free: "Breaking a mirror means seven years of bad luck." Unless you replace the carpet the shards landed in, it very well might. :P
List at least 3, you can list more if you want, of things you have heard.
"Find a penny, pick it up, and all day long you'll have good luck." I didn't understand when I was younger why this was good luck; now I do, as it's a rather dated/old expression, from when a penny was good luck and not a pocketweight. This one reaches me; I tend to pick up found pennies even if I have no earthly use for a penny. (It doesn't say that you can't put it back down, though, and I figure dropping it into the charity jars at the grocery store is a tiny beginning of good luck for someone else, too.)
"Step on a crack, break your mother's back." A child's superstition. I believed it wholeheartedly about half the time when I was young; I'd carefully dodge cracks. On the other hand, the rest of the time I didn't even think about it. I understood, at some level, that I was humoring it, I think, when it bugged me.
"If a black cat crosses your path, it's bad luck." Especially if it's the ever-pushy Basta...but anyway....
And a fourth one for free: "Breaking a mirror means seven years of bad luck." Unless you replace the carpet the shards landed in, it very well might. :P
no subject
My father found out that this was true, the hard way, when the hammer fell off and landed on his head. He was mad and in pain, but was otherwise more or less all right. (This was the 80s in Alaska; of course he was all right.)
Cold hands, warm heart.
Opening an umbrella in the house is bad luck.
Especially if it's a five-year-old doing it.
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Knock on wood is a lovely corruption of knocking on trees (because that's where the hamadryads lived).
And my all time favorite, it's not a rabbit's foot that is good luck but the left hind foot of a rabbit killed at midnight under a full moon by a cross-eyed man. Which explains why it isn't good luck for the rabbit. :)