Friday the 13th...Here it Comes Again

By Valerie X Armstrong

 I come from a rather superstitious family...My grand mother was Irish and always knocked on wood to ward off trouble if she thought she had spoken in a way that might have been a jinx to herself or someone she cared about...She would make sure to toss some salt over her left shoulder if she had happened to spill some, inadvertently.  She swore, when she was a child,  she heard a banshee scream and saw it run away from the house across the street where a neighbor lady had just died (She described the banshee as a tiny hunched old woman wearing a long skirt and a bandana). We always were aware when it was  Friday the Thirteenth, and were especially cautious on those days.

  A lot of this rubbed off on me and I spent many a day trying to avoid cracks in the sidewalk for fear of contributing to my mother somehow breaking her back.  We were keenly aware of black cats crossing our paths while we were driving, and would lick our index fingers and touch them to the inside roof of the car to prevent any ill fate from befalling us from the jaywalking felines.

In the back of my mind I always thought that these superstitions might just be so much goat droppings, but just in case they did have some basis in reality, I treated them with a healthy respect.

My first husband was killed in an accident at work on Friday September 13th.  He was only twenty years old.  We had a small baby only four months old.  Losing my husband was bad enough, but  to lose him on THAT day really freaked me out.  I thought perhaps there really is something to the superstition, although I've read and re-read all about the origin of the legend.  I received little comfort from being told it was only coincidence. 

 What made and still makes matters worse, is that over the past several decades, since my husbands death, the number thirteen is inordinately obvious in my day to day life.  I will awaken in the night and it's always 2:13 or 3:13 or 4:13 on my bedside digital clock...Never a fourteen or a fifteen, or even a twelve, for that matter.  When  ever I glance at the clock during the day...same deal... always a 13.  The number keeps coming up in all different scenarios..It jumps out at me as if it were my husband trying to send me a message from beyond. 

 Unless I have to do  something really important, I'll probably be at home lying low on any given Friday the Thirteenth. I hated sending my kids off to school on those days and I still never fail to let them know when a Friday the 13th is coming up and caution them to be extra careful. 

 Tomorrow is Friday September 13, 2013 , so to all my friends and family, whether superstitious or not, take care and be well.