Posts tagged superstitions

If you write someone’s name in red ink, you wish death upon them—which is taken very seriously. My students and fellow teachers grab red markers and pens out of my hand before I write someone’s or my own name and offer their blue or black one instead.

If you hear whistling, it’s a ghost, so don’t turn around—Brendan takes advantage of this and often eerily whistles in class to disturb his students. (For those of you who don’t know, our school’s motto is “fun” so this is his interpretation.)

If you point at a full moon, your ear will be cut off—I have no ideas about even the implied association or logic behind this one, but its widely known and followed. For you skeptics, read more.

If a man wears a green hat, his wife is cheating on him—Now this one leaves me skeptical: If this saying is widely known, wouldn’t men avoid wearing green hats regardless? Only an ignorant man would wear one. So, it only works on ignorant men, I conclude. And, now that the ball’s rolling, if the man is ignorant, maybe it points to the root of his marital problems. Zing!

It’s t minus 30 days till Brendan and I return to sweet home USA. To force myself to endure retrospection and appreciation I will post an anecdote per day and secretly hope my doing so will be rewarded with the feeling that time is passing quicker.

So, smell that? It might be your luck changing! If, you subscribe to Taiwanese culture, which views a squishy step in fresh dog poop to be a prod to buy a lottery ticket and smile all day.

I found out about this view after I crabbily joined Brendan on a walk before breakfast and stepped in a huge pile of the warm stuff. I shared the story later to my students as part of my diatribe on how everything had gone wrong that week. (Same week my facebook was spammed with thousands of Sim City comments on my photos.)

They told me to buy a lottery ticket as soon as possible. I didn’t. But it did make me feel less gross and more accepting of the splats and tubes of terds that speckle the streets and sidewalks here.