Knock Knock

Avoid the black cat!

Salt over the left shoulder.

Knock on wood.

Rabbit's foot.

Wear the evil eye.

There, all set to go!

All of these actions are things we do every day in order to set our lives on track. When we see a black cat, we expect our day to go terribly wrong. When we pass under a ladder, we live through the day frightened of what may happen.

These superstitions are nothing more than stupid beliefs we cling on to in order to have an "external force" act on our lives, change its current projectile and destination. We think that wearing an evil eye will protect us from a car crash, so we drive more recklessly. And when we don't actually crash into the back of a truck, we think it is because of the "eye".

When we see an owl on the sedge of our balcony, we expect someone to die in the following 24 hours. At least that's the way things work in Turkey.

If we have a rabbit's foot around our necks, well, then, we will ace the physics test!

But actually all of this is caused by logical fallacies. We only notice that there was an owl on our balcony if someone dies that day and we assume a causality. We can always perform poorly at an exam, but that one single time you may not be wearing your evil eye, and, again, we do the best thing humans do, the thing we are all professionals at; we assume. So these traditions are born by your very own mind tricking you. Like every false, hollow, seemingly-useful-but-really-not-worth-a-dime thing on our planet today,superstitions, too, are created only by humans.  They are all things humanity sticks onto to be able to blame something else for what happens to them. Superstitions exist for the same reasons that religion exists for. All these false beliefs are built on the same, selfish, arrogant idea: something went wrong? blame it on someone else.

So, we do knock on wood when we see a very pretty baby, or when someone mentions something horrible happening to another person. I personally do not believe that me knocking on the aged furniture at our house, not even real wood, probably, would delay the Reaper and turn him the wrong way at the intersection just down the road from our home, but my grandma does, and she tells me to do so, insistingly.

Even the most skeptical person on the face of earth, the scientists at CERN or the astronauts in the space shuttle looking down on our blue marble, has an instance of doubt when a black cat walks across the road right in front of them, or when a mirror shatters into a thousand pieces in their apartments.

So when I take the IB exams next year, I won't depend on an evil eye to protect me or a knock on the table to get me a 7. But, just to be safe, I still will wear my blue necklace, be careful around mirrors for the couple of weeks before the exams, pull my hair if I see a black cat on the street while waiting for the bus, and knock on the wood if anyone mentions failing the test or getting a bad grade, because you never know. Someday, those guys at CERN or USC Research Team may just announce that knocking on wood increases your intelligence and awareness.

 

Murphy's Law? Maybe.

Yesterday, I performed at a concert. And until the moment I got up on the stage (I was the last to go, by the way), I practically lived the statement "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong".

The concert was organized by my piano teacher and she wanted her students to give a concert. She asked me if I would play in it. I said, "Gladly!". She asked me if I had anything to do that Tuesday night, May 7th. I thought about it for a while, and the date rang the bell: math exam, Ding! Luckily, the test was on Tuesday, so I didn't have any studying to do that night. Anyway. She told me that the rehearsal would be at 18:00. I told her that I come from school around 17:00 and I could easily make it... Haha.

So Tuesday came rolling, I took the painfully hard calculus exam, and was excited the whole day for the concert that night. I got on the bus, and because of the people who took the bus that day, I  realized that I would be dropped off 3rd from the last.

But that was just the beginning.

The road we normally take was unusually and incredibly crowded and a jogging turtle could have passed us for a while there.

When it was finally my turn to get dropped off, the bus driver "forgot" I was in the bus and missed the turn which lead to my street. I had to ride along in the bus until he dropped off the remaining three people.

I finally got home, ate some stuff so fast I couldn't taste it, fixed myself an outfit, splashed on some makeup, and we were getting in a cab at 18:10.

Oh, what's that?

Some people tried to take charge and are running around yelling shallow slogans with banners in their hands, so the police closed off a street.

Some genius city planner decided to work on the asphalt in one of the main arteries at the place I was going to, so bye-bye free flowing traffic!

It took us 30 minutes to go somewhere we would've gone in 10 minutes any other day.

Now, I don't want to commit any logical fallacies or anything, but, if all of these weren't Murphy's Laws alive in flesh and blood, what were they?

Of course, I would not notice the jammed traffic every other day when I did not have a concert to get to.

I would not care so much if the bus driver had forgotten to drop me off any other day. So maybe, just because today I had somewhere and some event I had to get to, because I searched for misfortunes all along the way, I noticed these stuff.

Nonetheless, something, maybe a decision I made or maybe the fluttering of a butterfly's wings on the top of a skyscraper in Shanghai caused me to be late to that concert. I don't know what was at work that day, but that chaotic afternoon was far from normal... Murphy's Law? Maybe.