A self-made man is one who believes in luck and sends his son to Oxford. – Australian author Christina Stead

Life isn’t fair. Have you ever noticed that the implacable Gods of chance always pick you for a tax audit, but never to win the lottery.

And yet, for my friend Cletus, a golf match is always a test of his skill against his opponent’s luck.

That’s life. But, as always, man has never failed to come up with crafty solutions to stave off bad luck. One could touch wood, sprinkle salt over one’s left shoulder or stumble on a horseshoe. Better yet, one could do all three things in quick succession. In his epic Quatrain 666, Nostradamus guaranteed that the aforementioned practice would consign unlucky intent into oblivion.

That’s superstition for you, the belief that supernatural influences are just waiting to trip you up. But before you deem the belief irrational, remember Stevie Wonder made a lot of money out of it. Or that the song made keyboardists realise the clavinet could sound just as funky as distort on a  lead guitar. 

I only mention this because I read this morning that it’s Friday the 13^th today, a news-flash that caused me to sit up sharply in bed, which is never advisable because it tends to knock one’s head against the bed post. Which, I suppose, is just as well as it’s made of wood, the bed post, that is.  

The fear of the number13 is so steeped in the human psyche that it’s crept into the lexicon: the word triskaidekaphobia was coined precisely to describe it.  

Its origins are shrouded in mystery but it’s generally believed to stem from the Christian belief that Jesus Christ was crucified on a Friday together with the attendant faith that13 people were seated together for His Last Supper.  

Perversely though, the day of his crucifixion is known as Good Friday which is surely an oxymoron. From all accounts, there was nothing good or mannerly about it. 

Asked what were the things he most disliked, the iconoclastic thinker, Christopher Hitchens replied “Stupidity, especially in its nastiest forms of racism and superstition.” Hitchens might be unduly harsh in his assessment and the truth is probably closer to what Bertrand Russell said: “Fear is the main source of superstition” because, I suppose, what we don’t understand we can make mean anything.   

And yet, there is something sinister enough about a black cat crossing your path to make the hairs at the back of your neck prickle. Especially if said cat suddenly stops to stare at you with a silent, murderous and baleful regard.

Of course, it may all mean nothing and we are simply letting our imaginations run riot. As Groucho Marx observed: “If a black cat crosses your path, it signifies that the animal is going somewhere.” 

Something surreal, however, happened on the day that the Islamic clergy-led state government of Terengganu announced it would not send its women gymnasts to take part in next year’s Malaysia Games. The reason: the sport required attire that were not courteous, not suitable and not sharia-compliant. 

At the very moment the announcement was being made, a black cat crossed the path of a workman who’d just spilled salt under the ladder of his counterpart, perched there to repair the thirteenth bulb of the thirteenth chandelier on the thirteenth floor of the Terengganu state assembly building at that very moment a mirror cracked in the men’s washroom on the floor. 

It was bizarre…

…You’re traveling through another dimension – a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind…

ENDS