Superstitions and the superstitious

Most of us are familiar with a number of warnings that may or may not make sense to us. I am talking about something we know as superstitions. I don’t think of myself as a superstitious person. You may find that I occasionally will walk under a ladder (if it looks safe), and if I break a mirror I am not afraid I will have seven years of bad luck. I have four black cats (including the tuxedo cats) in my house, and they all cross my path often. Perhaps that is bad luck, as our black cat named Zorro has tripped me a couple of times.

There is a superstition I remember, and I do heed the warnings. Much earlier in my life (when I was a child), I heard that if you tell a bad dream before breakfast, it will come true. Truly, I do not believe this, but I don’t take any chances with this one. If I have a bad dream, I make sure I have at least a piece of toast before I share what happened in my bad dream.

As a small child, my hair was straight “as a board,” and my mother would give me permanents (ugh) so I would have curly hair. I always hated those perms. My grandmother, who was a bit superstitious, had a number of superstitions in her head that she shared with me. I remember some of them to this day. She told me if I would eat bread crusts, it would turn my hair curly. I hated bread crusts, but I wanted my hair to be curly without having to get perms, so I began eating and started liking bread crusts. I even liked eating the heels of the bread. In just a few short years, my hair began to have some waves. This is the absolute truth!