Friday was April 13th. And here I was, completely forgetting that it was April 13th.
Also, not really caring that it was said date. To be honest I don’t give in to such things as walking under ladder, or black cats. If I see a black cat, the only thing I’m thinking is “I wonder if it’ll let me pet it”. It’s sort of like what Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson said. Kids are fine, it’s adults that have the problem. The following video details what I mean by that.
So I don’t give into the hysteria, albeit minor, that surrounds something like Friday the 13th. Last year when a small group of people were talking about the rapture (which, they got wrong not once, but twice), I wasn’t giving into the announcement of doom and gloom. I wasn’t giving away all of my worldly possessions because of some mistranslation of the Bible. When the Mayan “prediction” of the end of the world comes around, I’m not gonna freak out. Because the evidence of what has come to pass clearly states that everything’s gonna be fine. Here’s another way of looking at it. If the Mayans could predict the end of the world, how come they didn’t predict that the Spaniards would virtually destroy them and end their civilization.
I’m an inquisitive guy. When I get thinking about these things like Friday the 13th and such, I look it up. Because I wanna know how this came about. First line in the Wikipedia entry for Friday the 13th states: Friday the 13th is a date that is considered to be bad luck in western superstition. Look at the last word. Superstition. Look further into the folklore of the date, it doesn’t appear in western civilization until the 19th Century. And that is in the writings of Henri Grevedon, who wrote about Gioachino Rossini who died on Friday, November 13. Rossini’s biography was written in 1869. But in the writing, Grevedon stated:
He [Rossini] was surrounded to the last by admiring friends; and if it be true that, like so many Italians, he regarded Fridays as an unlucky day and thirteen as an unlucky number, it is remarkable that one Friday 13th of November he died.
So, it reveals that some people believed not only was the date bad luck, but Friday’s themselves were considered bad luck as was the number 13. Good thing we don’t have 13 months in the year, because that date would spell the destruction of the world.
There is a phobia that surrounds the date, much like the recently discovered phobia, mobophobia, which is fear of losing your cell phone. I kid you not on that. But, the fear of Friday the 13th is called friggatriskaidekaphobia. This comes from the Norse goddess Frigga, for whom Friday was named after, and triskaidekaphobia, which means fear of the number 13.
As with many things, different cultures have different ways to explain their superstitions. In Spain, Friday the 13th is cool. It’s fine. But Tuesday the 13th, that’s something else. In Italy, it’s Friday the 17th. In the United States, stress study centres have reported that there are an estimated 17 to 21 million people who have a fear of Friday the 13th. It’s said to cause an 800 to 900 million dollar lose in business due to the fact that people are so gripped with fear of the date, that they cannot conduct their usual, daily routine. Even to the point where they don’t get out of bed.
On the plus side of that, Holland reports that the number of accidents for any Friday the 13th actually declines more than any other Friday. This is due in part, to the fact that people are considered more cautious on this particular date.
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