I am not a superstitious person and thus far every Friday the 13th has passed by without incident for me or anyone I know. Still as a writer the idea of a day of bad luck appeals to me.
Have any of you been aversely affected by it? Any stories to tell? Do you have any other days you think are unlucky? I had one friend who would not go outside on his birthday because he was convinced it was cursed.
Here’s hoping today passes without untoward incident for anyone!
well, this year has pretty much sucked since February, culminating is a truck backing into my car while I was pumping gas this week.
A local shop sells these candles. They’re somewhat expensive ($11 for a 1.5″ diameter 8″ tall pillar). they’re “magical” candles, made a certain way, and you’re supposed to burn them a certain way (such as only when the moon is waxing). I thought it was a little bogus, until I burned a “properity” version of the candle. my freelance business got three orders (it’s a second job, so I’m not selling hard, three orders in a week is very unusual). Fluke, right? Well. I didn’t burn a candle the next month. No orders (not unusual). But every month I burn one of those candles, I get business like mad. There’s no other variable that works as well (time of year, etc).
So I’m going to visit this store again and buy a “luck” or “positive energy” candle at my first opportunity.
Nah, I don’t think much of Friday the 13th. If anything bad happens today I might jokingly blame it on the day, but otherwise it doesn’t have any affect on me. I haven’t really heard any stories that really represent the bad luck of the day, but I do know one of my friends is really adverse to the number 13. She’s adverse to odd numbers as a whole…she gets mad if we don’t even put an even number of ice cubes in our cups!
friday the 13th is actually a lucky day for me. todays usually the day i dont trip and fall on my face or any of the usual unco stuff i do on a regular basis. also, whats not to love about it? friday: usually no school if its during the school year. and 13: my fave number
forgot to mention, Friday and 13 are sacred to (I think) Freya. This is why our Western/Christian culture believes Friday the 13th is bad.
Oh, that’s why I’m getting such a boat load of crazy intensive customer support type phonecalls today…
That’s funny that your friend thinks his birthday is cursed! There is a Mad About You episode where Paul thinks his birthday is cursed,so he doen’t want to go out or celebrate it at all. The episode shows how his last several birthdays have gone (very badly, by the way) and ends with everyone singing Happy Birthday to Paul while taking him to the hospital in an ambulance. It’s a pretty good one.
Great. Now I have the Mad About You song in my head. “Tell me why I love you like I do, tell me who can stop my heart as much as you…” The people here at work aren’t going to think I’m crazy at all.
dawn: wow, that’s some obsessive compulsive disorder that your friend has with the whole ice cube thing.
Bad luck? More like good business! My eldest son used to work at the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose. While he has a different job now, he still comes down on each Friday the 13th to run midnight tours through the house – more income for him, lots of income for the Mystery House. In all the time he’s been doing this, there have been no recorded instances of anything bad happening on these tours, though there have been cases of ghostly sightings, house rumbles, and lighting failures (when all around has been fine).
Good Business – I love that. Taking something that most people view as bad and finding the good in it!
And who has time to count ice cubes? I’m jut happy when I take the time to actually put ice in the cup.
But I have to admit, things like Friday the 13th make for good, scary stories. I’ll have to think up a good bedtime story for the kids tonight.
I was locked out of the house when I was 10 on a Friday the 13th. I had a key, but it wasn’t working in the lock for some reason.
That’s it, though, so I have a 27-year streak of not-so-bad-luck since.
I feel pretty much like you, Justine. Ya, sure, it’s cool for stories, but I don’t believe in it in Real Life.
The story I’m writing right now involves demons, and my protag’s dad died on a Friday the 13th.
See? Good for stories. 😀
For what it’s worth, last Saturday (7/7/07) was supposedly an extra-lucky day.
Hah, I didn’t even realize it was F13 until I saw this post. Though I did notice coming into work this morning that one of the elevators was marked Out Of Service, which I don’t think I’ve seen happen before. Hope no one was trapped in there, otherwise they were going to be big F13 believers now 🙂 Now I have a sudden urge to go see _1408_ again…
i like the idea of friday the 13th, but actually believe in it? nah. plenty of hideous things happen on other days, too. the only reason people pay more attention on friday the 13th is that it’s friday the 13th. 😛
the idea of an unlucky day is pretty interesting, though. i had fun looking it up on wikipedia last night. sadly, there won’t be another friday the 13th until june 2008, so enjoy it now. 😛 also, in greece and spain, it’s tuesday the 13th. hehe.
I’ve never really believed in it, but today has been sort of unlucky. When I woke up, there was no hot water, so I had to take a cold water sponge bath.
Then during the storytime for babies, we forgot to bring in the CD, so we were music-less (except for the singing).
So far that’s it, but the no hot water was a pain.
The only bad luck I had was knocking over a glass of water at 6 a.m. and cringing when it shattered into a hundred thousand tiny pieces, which I (hopefully) got up later with the vacuum cleaner. Not the best start to the day. Also a low level nausea that persists, possibly unrelated.
my little brother who’s 8 said that because it was friday the 13th, everything that would be the opposite of what would normally happen. he was saying this in regards to the phillies game that was on meaning that they would win. funny thing is- they did. 13 to 3!