I pay attention to personal superstitions because they’re actual learnings. The old leftover fake superstitions are just tools for Cool People to mock Uncool People.
Incidentally, I cited the “bird flu” superstition in the linked 2005 item, which turned out to be prophetic…. or more likely I was seeing the start of the “bioterror” holocaust in 2005 without knowing that it would destroy the entire fucking world 15 years later.
EnidBuzz asked about superstitions, and got a couple of personal answers along with a lot of “no superstitions”, which is an illusion. Everyone has plenty of personal superstitions.
1. I have to come in the same door that I went out of.
Makes sense. You survived entering through Door A, so it’s likely to be okay in the other direction. You don’t know about Door B.
2. you don’t clean the lucky, combat deployment, coffee mug. you just keep filling it. had a mug that went through 10 deployments, brought it home, told the wife not to touch it. She cleaned it and now it just sits in the cupboard. Combat vets will understand.
Makes even more sense. The mug survived along with you, and you were allowed to take it with you afterward. Don’t mess with an object that helped you to survive.
I haven’t been in combat. Is there a parallel for prison? Yes, my pipe. The prison authorities allowed it in, it helped to preserve my sanity while in the walls, and I continued using it afterward until better forms of luck enabled me to quit the habit.
Polistra's Mill 