View from the Cheap Seats is an extension of the newsroom, which is frequently a site of heated debate on topics ranging from the extremely serious to the utterly ridiculous. In addition to the views of our two regular columnists Thom Barker and Calvin Daniels printed here, please visit yorktonthisweek.com for additional web exclusive content by Michaela Miller and Devin Wilger.
This week: Do you have any personal superstitions?
No, except... nothing
The short answer to whether I have personal superstitions is a categorical no. The long answer is also no.
I live my life by a simple rule. If you have to believe in something without evidence, I don’t. Period.
The thing about most superstitions, however, is that not only is there no evidence for them, but they are complete nonsense even from the standpoint of very rudimentary logic.
Take, just for example, the old idiom that things happen in threes. There is an implied time constraint in this idea, but the actual timing is completely ambiguous. Do they all have to happen within a week, a month, a year? Also, what counts and what doesn’t? I had two really bad things happen to my car in the same week. If another doesn’t happen for two years, does it still count? Or can I go back to the last time, which was three years ago? But that was a different car.
Do they all have to be significant? The first was a broken window, the second was a broken differential. Does a coffee spill on Monday count as number three?
Superstitions are subject to every kind of confirmation bias there is. You can always make it work, if you try hard enough.
The crazy thing about superstitions is they are so prevalent and ingrained in society that. Even though I don’t believe in superstitions, I still find myself saying things like, “Do you ever notice that things always take longer when you don’t have the time?” That, of course, is superstitious nonsense, but I can’t help myself from thinking it because I’ve heard it so many times.
We are a credulous bunch, Homo sapiens.
-Thom Barker
Cindy and her broken technology
I don’t think I’ve held much in the way of superstition since I was a child, the days when I thought clowns kidnapped people through drugs in face paint or that vampires would try to kidnap me on halloween. The great joy of being a six year old with an over-active imagination has faded in time as I’ve grown older and more sensible, but that’s also meant that I don’t particularly have much in the way of superstition to hold onto, because logic dictates that no matter what the brain might try to work into a pattern there isn’t anything real behind it.
However, I do have one thing that will qualify, and that involves my sister-in-law Cindy. The short version: If my sister-in-law buys or interacts with something electronic, it will soon break. Some of this could have a logical explanation, such as she is not very good with electronics, or maybe tries to fix things without knowing how to do it. She has gone through five phones in three years, several televisions, multiple dishwashers, both washers and dryers and a wide range of minor electronic devices in the time I’ve known her. But those are all things that are in her house, right? Totally logical explanation, either her, my brother, or their kids are the ones who wind up breaking their electronics.
Except that it also affects stuff that she doesn’t use. For a housewarming present she bought me a deep fryer, it doesn’t work anymore. She paid for it and gift wrapped it but didn’t really touch it, so there’s no way you can actually blame her for any faults. And yet, it broke relatively soon after I got it. A DVD player purchased for my mother as a gift didn’t last very long either. Between her own terrible luck and the gifts she has purchased for others, she has a curious knack for finding the one thing that’s going to have a manufacturing fault. It’s at the point where I’m just assuming that if she touches something electronic, it’s not long for this world. Perhaps she is haunted by a malevolent spirit that happens to be Amish.
-Devin Wilger
Avoiding ladders
The idea of superstitions is an intriguing one to me.
That is not to say I’m particularly superstitious, but I am generally curious about where certain superstitions come from.
Take for example the black cat cross in your path being a sign of bad luck.
If one crosses my path I will assuredly mention its crossing and the chance of bad luck, but I don’t rush across the street, or turn the corner with the car to get away from the meandering pussycat.
What is interesting the black cat has a folder full of lore surrounding it, often being seen as a good luck sign, although clearly that is not the case today in North America where black cats are said to be more difficult to adopt out from animal shelters because of the bad luck surrounding them.
In other cases I get the reasoning behind a superstition, such as not walking under a ladder. That is not so much superstition as common sense. There is a likelihood a worker used the ladder to climb up to a job, and frankly I don’t need a hammer falling on my noggin so I avoid such things.
Still, for the most part superstitions are not something I worry about, Friday the 13s come and go and I barely think about beating the odds of fate on such days.
The one superstition I do hold to though is not mentioning things such as shut-outs in hockey, or no-hitters in baseball.
My logical brain understands the mere mention of such things cannot change the event in any way.
But there have been too many times where I have witnessed a comment on an impending shut-out, only to see it ended with a shift or two.
The verbalization was not likely the cause, but just in case there is a cosmic twist of fate at work, I just as soon not be the one to jinx a good thing.
- Calvin Daniels
