Luck

A few weeks ago, I broke a mirror. I was getting out of the shower, and I knocked the hand mirror in the bathroom off of its little hook. Smash.

I was a little bummed. I'm not terribly superstitious, and will deliberately walk under a ladder now and then to tempt fate a little, but the mirror thing doesn't happen very often. That was on a Thursday. The following week, I was a disaster.

On Monday morning, I was carrying my yoga bag, a coffee, my backpack, and the newspaper when I stepped on the subway. When the train started, I dropped and grabbed for everything in the most comical way possible. The newspaper (tucked under my arm) slipped, so I reached for it with my coffee-hand, in the process dropping my coffee (which miraculously didn't spill!). I reached for the coffee with the arm holding my yoga bag, which I then also dropped. I burst out laughing, and honestly I'm not sure how my fellow F-trainers kept a straight face, because I felt like a Looney Tunes cartoon.

Tuesday, I went to the deli next door to purvey supplies for Waffle Wednesday (a monthly tradition wherein we eat waffles for breakfast at work - I highly recommend it). As I crouched down to stash the maple syrup in a low cupboard in the kitchen, the seat of my brand new pants tore neatly - about 4", right along the seam. I managed to make it back to my desk undetected and wrap a sweater around my waist until I could slip into the ladies' room to change into my running clothes (luckily, it was a training night).

Wednesday I attended a job fair in my hometown. After the event ended, my co-worker and I were happily driving along when a police officer appeared in front of the car, waving a radar gun. That's right, I got a speeding ticket. The officer said, "Unfortunately for you, we're in the middle of an anti-speeding campaign." Right. The ticket cost more than my return flight from NY to Toronto. I'm not even exaggerating.

The next morning, exactly one week after a little piece of shattered glass cost me $243, a pair of pants, and my dignity, I found a four-leaf clover on the way to work, and my luck has been on an upswing ever since.

Wikipedia defines superstition as "the irrational belief that future events are influenced by specific behaviors, without having a causal relationship." Irrational? Maybe. Also irrational, but worth considering: If we believe we're lucky, might that make it true?