yes, what else would you talk about on Friday the 13th? Superstition, as a kid, was always more about the excitement of or the potential, like watching a scary movie. But as an adult I find superstition much harder to understand. Paraskevidekatriaphobia: [good word, no?] the fear of Friday the 13th. Wow! How fun. It’s got it’s own word. And it’s stupid. Fun, if you think it’s a lark and use the day to have harmless fun. But stupid if it rules your life and makes you do things you wouldn’t ordinarily.
To me, superstition has more to do with how much control you have in your own life. How much you think you can manage.If you think you have little control, if you are having problems managing, then yeah! it’s someone else’s fault, be it from a curse, or you stepped on a crack or you forgot to wear you lucky underwear. Superstition. A widely held but unjustified belief in supernatural causation leading to certain consequences of an action or event. So. It’s not you fault. It’s out of your control. Pooh!
So where did this come from? According to Wikipedia, Friday has been considered an unlucky day since the 14th Century. LOL, in modern times I would have put the unlucky much earlier in the week. But of course, we have Black Friday from the stock market crash and Black Friday for the violence and mayhem at the malls. So. Okay, we’ve woven that into our consciousness. The next is that thirteen is an unholy number. See. I would have thought nine, or even eleven. But again, we parse a lot of our history into twelve. Twelve months of the year. Twelve apostles. Twelve tribes of Israel. Twelve gods of Olympus. So that next number, Thirteen, has to portend bad things. Okay. I get that.
Friday the 13th can happen up to three times in a single year; either in February, March and November in an ordinary year, or January, April and July in leap years. So this year, April. Then July. Okey, dokey. Two of these this year. But truthfully, knock on wood :-)….