Ayuh! Good ol' paraskevidekatriaphobia (fear of Friday the 13th for you laypeople). I never understood it, myself; I've never had anything happen to me on that day, and in fact some very good things have happened in my life on those particular Fridays. But apparently the tradition of fearing Friday the 13th goes back a good ways; Friday's bad reputation goes back to the 14th century, and 13's bad rep goes back to a very old superstition based on the incident of the Last Supper: there were 13 at the table (Judas included) at that last Passover Seder with Jesus and his disciples, and look how that ended up! So I guess the two teamed up are supposed to combine to create some really bad mojo.
One of my favorite lines from a movie: In Apollo 13 Tom Hanks' Jim Lovell comes home early to tell the wife and kids that his team has been moved up to the Apollo 13 mission due to illness on the original crew. Marilyn Lovell, played by Kathleen Quinlan, has some problems with the number of the mission.
Marilyn Lovell: Naturally, it's 13. Why 13?
Jim Lovell: It comes after 12, hon.
Heh, heh! Good old scientific, level-headed thinking wins the day! Except, of course, something went very wrong indeed on that mission, and NASA has never numbered another mission 13 since.
Nah! I still don't buy it! But that doesn't mean we can't have some fun. When it comes to superstition, thanks to Stevie Wonder we can get funky widdit! How 'bout some live "Superstition"? Yeah!
Happy Friday the 13th!
Black cat photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, with some Photoshop fiddlin' from me.
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Comments: 8
But that's the best I've got.