Do you know anyone who has this dangerous condition? Do you know what this condition is? Paraskavedekatriaphobia is the fear of Friday the 13th. Say that 1 times fast.
Yesterday was Friday the 13th. Now, the extent of its influence on my life is simply an opportunity to make witty comments at work about what we should and shouldn't do that day. I get a laugh and we move on.
But yesterday, I was on my way out to lunch with a couple of acquaintances; one of which was natively from India. On our way to the door, he opened his umbrella to see if it still works (since he dropped in in the hall). I commented that he was pretty bold to open his umbrella inside on Friday the 13th, and that I should keep my distance from him. I got a laugh from the other guy but this Indian didn't get it. This started an entertaining conversation about the comparison of western and Indian superstitions.
One of them he told me was that if you killed a cat (on purpose or accidentally), then you have to make (or buy) a small golden cat and give it to the local priest ... or else. I don't remember what the or else was, perhaps it was bad luck or some kind of curse. He said that this applied only to cats. (I think he started this story after I told him about crossing the path of black cats or something.) Isn't that great. I love working with people from across the world (unless it means a 6am conference call). I learn so much.
I also learned that most Indians (when I use the word Indian, I will always mean "from India") do eat meat ... they just don't eat beef. This is why they are generally not good at barbecue, and why we always go to a barbecue place for lunch.
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2 comments:
JG, I'm surprised you gave me the link to this. You know I'm going to be correcting grammar/spelling in my head the entire time I read this ...
Okay, then for your sake, I will at least run the spell-checker before I publish. However, please view the run-on sentances and "grammatical errors" as author license to simulate for the reader my stream-of-consciousness. In the end, perhaps you will better understand why chose to become an engineer and not a writer. I am warning you that such corrections of grammatical errors in the comments section are not welcome as they may hurt my feelings. However, if you are truly inspired by what you see here, please feel free to publish this in your newspaper for others to enjoy and be better for it. We can work out the compensation offline.
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