Sidestep if you Wish.

((Recently edited for less tedious sentences. Thoughts?))

I'd just like to say I'm not a superstitious person. But I'm not not a superstitious person.

I'm not afraid of breaking mirrors nor do I freak if I spill milk, or step on a cracked sidewalk. Though I will look twice if a black cat crosses my path and don't see the harm in throwing a pinch of salt over my shoulder when accidentally spilled.

It's the whole, "What could it possibly hurt?" sort of deal.


So when coming to such a junction, with my arms cradling a bucket of liquid and several less then random items, I couldn't help but quickly scan over the possible occurrences. White shirts have the tendency to mean special doom when wet and tripping up the stairs in front of me didn't sound anything less than painful.

I sidestepped off the rocky path and circled around the ladder, taking extra care not to unexpectantly hook it with my things and send it cascading to the ground. Several quick little steps up the stairs and I was on my way one-hundred percent bad luck free.


Along with the ladder there are so very many of these superstitions. Some for the bettering of your luck and some not so much. All which range from small things; such as stooping for a penny, carrying a special charm, killing a spider or seeing it at a particular time, and wearing a hat indoors; then to normal household things, like opening an umbrella indoors, spilling milk or salt. Then into more seemingly random-like things, such as searching numberless patches of clovers for one with four leaves, wishing wells, horseshoes, and the list goes on into less known about and much stranger, fortunate and less so, happenings dealing with numbers and dates.


Soon I had found myself walking down the same stairs that earlier had caused me to take a second to think. Approaching the ladder I stopped nimbly and tilted my head, some people would go to great lengths to avoid ill luck, side stepping the ladder was hardly a difficult one among those possible actions.

I'd heard of a few reasons that walking beneath it was considered to hurt your possible fortune. One had to do with medieval times and that a leaning ladder was thought to resemble the gallows and so by walking underneath it you are playing out your own execution. Another points to the triangular shape a ladder will take when set upright or left leaning against a wall. The triangle is considered the symbol representing the Holy Trinity and to walk through a triangle violates and desecrates God while you, the perpetrator, fall prey to Satan. The latter one all very Christian-like.



I dipped my head as I chanced my luck and walked quickly through the ladder's rungs.


I didn't plan to spit on my shoe or cross my fingers until I saw a dog, nor was I going to walk backwards through it, reversing my luck and make a wish, or, once again using saliva, spit through the ladder's rungs three times.


I just continued on my way later ignoring the fact that I'd haphazardly slipped on the rocky path and narrowly missed crunching jagged rocks into my nostrils.

I'd just like to say I'm not superstitious. But I'm not -not- superstitious.


[Word count: 550]