by Katie McCollow

You guys! It’s Friday the 13^th. And we all know what that means–bad luck.

Some Pollyannas say bad luck is just a lack of preparation colliding with a lack of opportunity, but how does that explain an anvil randomly falling on your head or the TV going wonky during the New Girl season finale or my car blowing up because I ignored the ‘service engine’ light for six months?

My bangs aren’t bad luck and neither is your head lice!

And you nice people, who dropped by here today thinking you were getting John and getting me instead…well that ain’t good luck, is it?

But think of it this way—if this is the worst thing that happens to you today, then it wasn’t so bad. You may even enjoy it…but you do have to read all the way to the end, or something terrible will happen.

That’s not true! Nothing bad will happen*, not to you anyway, and the worst thing that will happen to me is, John will dress me down via email for not holding your attention (the words ‘click bait’ will be bandied about) but that’s not that bad either, because I won’t read it until next week. Feel cherished, knowing that John is very protective of his readership.

My point is, I believe that believing Friday the 13^th is a day for bad luck is a silly superstition, and I’m not just saying that because saying and writing that many times over, in a somewhat manic way as I lie under the covers and refuse to leave the house, will ensure that nothing bad will happen.

 

There’s a word for fearing Friday the 13^th; it’s ‘friggatriskaidekaphobia’, which is a lot harder to say than “Fear of Friday the 13^th”, but I think everyone should take a moment and at least try. In the comments section, please let us know how it went.

Adam (looking exasperatedly at his watch): “Let it be known that at noon on the very first Friday the 13^th, my girlfriend wrecked everything. The first bad luck thing to happen is, her best bits are suddenly covered with leaves.”**

Huh. Doomed from the beginning, that’s depressing…but you know what? Another quick search tells me that summer shorts are on sale at Old Navy, and that’s good news by any measure. I feel better!

Eve wishes she’d had free shipping too

Five Things That Either Are Happening or Did Happened on Friday the 13th

1. John Kasich Celebrates his 64^th Birthday

You remember him, right? Ran for president, seemed at least kind of sane, some of the time…no? Well anyway, it’s his birthday today. Whether or not this is good or bad is best left for him to decide. He seems like the type who would think that was good news, not one of those “Bleh, I always figured I would’ve made it onto Jeopardy by now” types.

I guess it’s fine it’s my birthday

2. Sam Patch’s Last Leap

This second tidbit is from the Livescience website, which I mistakenly went to thinking I could purchase cat food. Nope! Silly me. But I did find the headline “13 Freaky Things That Happened on Friday the 13th”, which is incredibly serendipitous, if you ask me.

Apparently on Friday, November 13, 1829, noted daredevil Sam Patch ( love the old-timey name) leaped (lept?) over the edge of Genesee Falls and his body was never recovered.

an actual picture of Sam Patch

Far freakier than this nob’s attempt to jump off a cliff and…not disappear? was the write-up of the event in the New York Times: “The waters, troubled a moment in swallowing their victim, are at rest! The expiring bubbles announce that the spirit has departed, leaving the body in the dark bosom of the ocean buried! The multitude shrink away abashed and rebuked!”  That’s some good stuff.

3. One Horror After Another

On Friday, October 13^th ,1972, a Uruguayan aircraft crashed in the Andes Mountains. The survivors ate the dead to stay alive, and a movie was made about it starring Ethan Hawke.*** I know. Let’s talk about something else.

4. The Friday the 13^th Movie Franchise was Born

On May 9^th, 1980. I’ve never seen any of those movies; the first one came out when I was only 12, and I wasn’t allowed to see it. After that I didn’t bother with the next 43 installments because I was afraid I wouldn’t know what was going on. Kevin Bacon was in it, and I could take the time to come up with a ‘Six degrees of Kevin Bacon” joke here, but I am not inclined to do so, and for that I won’t apologize.

5. And Lastly, Some really Good News

On Friday, April 13, 2029, the asteroid 99942 Apophis will safely fly by the Earth. When it was first discovered way back in 2004, some dumb scientists thought it would crash directly into Earth, but now smart scientists say no, it won’t. That is a huge relief, and I hope it sends you off into this day with a spring in your step, secure in the knowledge that that the odds of good things happening are equal to the odds of bad things happening.

Of all the things that happen on 4/13/29, this will NOT BE ONE OF THEM

*If anything bad does happen to you because you didn’t read all the way to the end, I am sorry. It wasn’t my fault, though.

**And on the eighth day, Eve invented the phrase ‘my eyes are up here’.

***I actually like Ethan Hawke a lot. Before Sunrise/Sunset are two of my all-time faves. Now I feel bad, because if he gets a Google alerts and sees this he might feel bad. Omigod! Do you think Ethan Hawke will read this??