ADVICE PLEASE

Pet

KatRobin said:
I had a bad Friday the 13 experience once. Had been away on a short break, during which I had flu, so that was crap for a start. Then when we got home we discovered we d been burgled. Things all over the place, some personal things removed, beer cans from the fridge on the floor. Bad bad bad. Wary of the 13th ever since!

I, too, had a bad Friday 13th experience.

I was taking the Central Line home from work when my train came to a halt between stations. Someone had thrown themselves under a train two stations ahead. We couldn't go forward because there was a train halted at the next station. We couldn't go back because the safety systems don't permit it. (The trains are often quite close together, and they don't want trains backing into each other.) The Central Line is the hottest line on the London Underground, and it was summer. What passes for a ventilation system on a Central Line train only works when it is in motion. It took an hour and half to override the safety systems and get us back to the previous station. It wasn't pleasant. It was, as I said, Friday the thirteenth and I can't help feeling that knowledge of the date may have affected the state of mind of the person, two stations ahead, under a train.

KatRobin

Well....that's an interesting idea to debate isn't it? Does the superstition / omen surrounding something influence how we react to it, or is there something more to it? I read why Friday 13 has all those portents linked to it ( easy to Google) and it is all v creepy. But then you can concoct any story to "explain" the uncanny or mystify the mundane.....just like statistics! Horrible story though Pet... How awful for you...and for the poor victim and their family of course.

Pet

Yes, it was awful for everyone on that train. When we finally escaped, London Underground offered us medical treatment. I thought that maybe I should have taken them up on it, but was anxious to start my difficult journey homeward. It would have been awful for the victim's family, too. Not to forget the driver of the train that hit the person, plus the workers who had to clear up the mess. And, to a lesser extent, the roughly half a million people who (I am told) commute on the Central Line. (The whole line would have been out for hours.) The person under the train must have jumped in the run up to rush hour -- causing disruption to the lives of the maximum number of people. As methods of suicide go, it has a lot more victims than most. For the person who jumped, it must have been over more or less instantly.

Yeah, I suspect that superstitions may sometimes be self-fulfilling prophecies. That said, I tend to go along with superstitions. There's no point in taking chances. If I see a single magpie ("one for sorrow") I always salute the bird to ward off ill fortune. On the first morning of each month, I say "white rabbits" for luck... and so on... It costs nothing, and you never know.

Ponygurl

@Pet "Yeah, I suspect that superstitions may sometimes be self-fulfilling prophecies. That said, I tend to go along with superstitions. There's no point in taking chances. If I see a single magpie ("one for sorrow") I always salute the bird to ward off ill fortune. On the first morning of each month, I say "white rabbits" for luck... and so on... It costs nothing, and you never know."

I heard if a bird shits on you, it's good luck. So now I lay on the front hood of my car every morning. Is that strange?

Pet

I'm sure people do it all the time in Florida.

iuventus

There's a name for that, and it ain't a type of jazz singing.

Pet

Lunacy, perhaps.

Ponygurl

Obviously I'm joking...but how in the world did that Superstition start?! Bird shit=Luck?! I'm almost afraid to ask. Why is saying "white rabbits" lucky Pet? All I can think of is a psychedelic Grace Slick. Is it something to do with "Alice in Wonderland"..??

Pet

Maybe the bird shit thing started to allow people to comfort themselves. On the minus side, a bird has defecated upon me. But, hey, on the plus side, I'm due a piece of good luck.

I don't think the white rabbits thing is connected with Lewis Carroll, still less with Grace Slick. It's so off the wall, and seems to make so little sense, perhaps it's true: saying 'white rabbits' on the first morning of the month really will bring good luck. There's also the Easter Bunny, of course, who is generally depicted as being white. And the concept of the Easter Bunny (as you may know) stems the sacred hare of the Anglo-Saxon goddess Eastre or Ostara. Eastre or Ostara is goddess of the spring and gives her name to the festival of Easter. Spring is the season for rebirth after the winter, so some association between hares/rabbits and good fortune seems natural enough. But perhaps I've rabbited about this for long enough.

Urban_Tribesman

In my understanding, it is good luck to say 'White Rabbits, White Rabbits, White Rabbits ' upon waking on the first day of each month before saying anything else. It was a common superstition among RAF pilots.

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