Step on a Crack

In this episode, Curator #135 takes a look at superstitions. Where they come from, which countries have the wackiest ones and why do South Koreans fear ceiling fans... How did the car game of 'Padiddle' lead to his own weird OCD superstition?  

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When I was younger, driving around with my friends at night, we would often partake in a rousing game of ‘padiddle’. When a car was spotted with only one working headlight, the first person to spot said car, punch the roof and yell padiddle, got a point. 

If it turned out to be a motorcycle or the other headlight was obscured by something, it was a penalty and we probably got to punch you. If you’re young and judging me in any way, keep in mind that we didn’t have smart phones to keep us busy.  

I don’t know how we started playing or where it even came from. I was surprised to find search results when I googled the word “padiddle”. I assumed it was something that my friends and I made up out of boredom one night. But like everything else it was passed on, in some similar form, from generation to generation. Depending on where in the country you live, it may have been called perdiddle or spelled differently with a p-e instead of a p-a. It turns out there are also people who called padaddles which meant a car’s tail light was out. Some claim to have even called the elusive padiddle padaddle. I’m skeptical because that’s the stuff of legend. 

The only thing the internet seems to be able to agree upon is that the first instance of it being used in pop culture was a 1948 Archie comic strip. In the old black and white newspaper comic, Archie is hanging out with a young lady on her porch. Archie offers up the idea of playing a game called padiddle. Everytime a car passes by with only one headlight, she has to give him a kiss. The girl agrees to the game even though there’s absolutely no reward in it for her if they don’t see any. 

Out of nowhere, here comes a car with one headlight. “Padiddle” calls Archie. Not wanting to break the rules, she kisses him. This happens six more times before suddenly his buddy Jughead comes running up from the backyard, letting Archie know that he can’t drive the car around the block anymore because the cops busted him for only having one headlight. Which by the way, Archie damaged to help further his plan. 

I’m too young to be an original Archie guy and too old to be into the Riverdale show, but if I’m going to be real with you, Archie sounds like kind of a turd.

Padiddle started off as a kissing game apparently and in some cases there are reports of it being a game where clothes were removed every time a padiddle was called. If movies have taught me anything, it’s that teens in the 1940’s and 50’s were bored and boredom led to smooching and junk. 

For me it was about punching roofs and punching each other. 

So is Archie creator Bob Montana responsible for the word? Sure, we can give him credit. It doesn’t really matter anyway, that’s not why we’re here. 

Episode 9 - Step on a Crack

Do you have any superstitions? Any good luck things you rub? I have a few, but my biggest one spawned from padiddle. 

For roughly six of the ten or so years I worked in Toledo, I drove an hour home every night around 1:00 am. It was just me and the truck drivers, heading northbound on I-75. I wasn’t often tired, but when I was, watching for padiddles helped pass the time. Now somewhere in that timeframe, padiddle lost its original meaning for me. Seeing a padiddle and punching the roof isn’t as rewarding when you’re playing by yourself. But something needed to be done. I couldn’t just let a car with one headlight pass by unrecognized. 

So the spotting, punching, calling out morphed into spotting, kissing my knuckles and then tapping the roof with the kissed knuckles. Why? I seriously have no clue. But I can tell you two things. 1.) I felt an urgent urgency to collect as many as I could and store them in my padiddle bank because I convinced myself that if I had one for every night I drove home, nothing bad would ever happen during my trip. And 2.) I still do it to this day. No lie. If you drive by me while I spot a padiddle, you will see me kiss my hand and slap it against the roof. Not with as much gusto as I used to. I’m more self conscious nowadays and like to see who’s around me first. My padiddles are much stealthier than before. 

So because of superstition, I took a game which used to get you kissed by a pretty girl and turned it into some obsessive compulsive nightmare where if I didn’t get enough padiddles, I’d get run off the road by an angry trucker. 

Although I still run through the motions, I no longer keep count or store them for a dry week of padiddle-less driving. I figure I have enough for a few years still by now. I think I’m okay. 

This is sort of unrelated, but I remember that someone started a rumor that if you flashed your brights at a driver who didn’t have their lights on that it could be a gang member taking part in a gang initiation rite of passage. The gang member would then turn around, catch up with you and cause your demise. That may or may not have actually been a thing. I refuse to google it as it freaked me out and I still don’t alert drivers who are driving with their headlights off, even now.

The definition of superstition is “a widely held but unjustified belief in supernatural causation leading to certain consequences of an action or event, or a practice based on such a belief.” Or ‘Padiddles save lives’.   

So what are the most common superstitions out there? The ones we hear the most about. Friday the 13th? Of course. The number 13 means bad luck for many people. Have you ever been to a hotel that skips the 13th floor? Or on an airplane where there is no 13th row. There’s walking under a ladder, breaking a mirror, opening an umbrella inside, black cats, death coming in threes.  

Sure there are good superstitions, salt over your shoulder, horseshoes, four leaf clovers. Those aren’t as fun though. You come here for the weird stuff. Whether you can instantly think of one or not, chances are that superstitions, good or bad probably play at least a small role in your lives in some way. 

Superstitions are often tied into religion. It can also be linked to wanting more control over things or the feeling that you need some luck in your life. Everytime I see 11:11 on a clock I think it means I get a wish. The wishes rarely come true, but the one or two times they did; make me continue the ritual, which is waaaay too often. 

So is it just your everyday Joes like me who have superstitions? No. Celebrities do too and often they make ours look pedestrian.

Superstition in sports is rampant. From watching pitchers jump over the foul line on their way back to the dugout, to not washing a jersey or shaving your beard. Rituals at the free throw line and before a field goal. Remember a famous football player named Ray Finkle? Ace Ventura saved the day eventually, but Ray went crazy all because the laces on the football he was about to kick were supposedly aimed the wrong way. Even the greatest basketball player to ever play the game, Michael Jordan, reportedly wore the same pair of shorts under his uniform in every game he ever played in. 

Supermodel and television host Heidi Klum carries her own baby teeth with her everywhere she goes to ward off evil. Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones eats a shepherd’s pie before every show. If anyone cuts into it before he can, he demands a new shepherd's pie and wont take the stage until he gets it. That guy is easily 104. It’s working for him I guess. When Lucille Ball was three, a bird flew into her home and became trapped. Unfortunately her father died later that day. She reportedly wouldn’t stay in a room with birds in pictures or in the wallpaper and there were never any sort of bird decor in any of her shows. Axl Rose refuses to play in cities that begin with the letter ‘M’. Jennifer Aniston will only enter an airplane if she taps the outside of the plane and her first step on board is with her right foot. 

The list goes on and on. My adapted padiddle is weird, so I won’t judge any of them, except maybe Heidi Klum. That’s just creepy.

*Musical interlude*

If we zoom in on some of the specific ones, maybe we can get a better idea of how this all started. 

Let’s start with mirrors. There are three big superstitions surrounding mirrors. The obvious one that everyone knows is that if you break a mirror you get seven years of bad luck. Apparently this one stems from the Ancient Romans. They believed that a mirror contains fragments of our own souls. So breaking a mirror would cause you to have bad luck and upset the balance of your health and well being. Romans believed that the broken mirror held a seven year curse and once lifted, the fragments were made whole again. 

In Mexico they strongly advise against having two mirrors facing each other in a room. If you’ve ever looked upon two mirrors, you know it causes infinite reflections. While it’s fun when you’re a kid, it also could be dangerous. When two mirrors face each other, it is said that it opens a doorway for the devil to escape into our world. 

At my home, we have one bathroom, in that bathroom are two mirrors facing each other. That explains a lot. 

Part of the Jewish mourning tradition is to cover all mirrors near the deceased. There are a couple of reasons families may do this. The practical purpose would be to prevent mourners from being vain and to focus more on remembering the dead. The more superstitious idea is that it prevents the soul from being reflected back during its attempt to pass out of the body and on to the afterlife.

Getting back to souls. Did you ever wonder why we are raised to say ‘Bless You’ or ‘God Bless You’ when someone sneezes? It’s not just because it’s polite. Our crazy Roman friends started this one as well. Their take on both sneezing and yawning is that your soul, which also leaves while you’re dreaming, can become separated from your body if you yawn or sneeze too hard. Saying bless you is a way to safeguard against your spirit wandering away. So should we be saying bless you after yawns too? 

Throughout history black cats have never been able to catch a break. Some would say rightfully so, not me though… I like cats… I’m not allergic at all… I don’t think they’re evil. Alright, fine, I don’t like cats. There, I said it. You can be mad at me all you want, but at least I’m not like these people. 

In the middle ages some folks associated black cats with the devil and blamed them for causing the Black Death pandemic. They would hunt and exterminate any black cats that crossed their path.  A couple of hundred years later when everyone accused everyone else of being a witch, people figured that black cats were the witch’s familiars. Familiar in this sense means “a demon supposedly attending and obeying a witch, often said to assume the form of an animal.”

Ever knock on wood? If so, you are participating in something that more than likely began with ancient paganism. These cultures believed that their spirits and gods lived inside of trees. They would knock on the trunks to call out their gods for protection and luck.

Death is another topic that comes with a myriad of superstitions. In the Philippines there is a tradition called ‘pagpag’. When you leave a funeral, never go straight home. You should always go out to dinner or shopping afterwards, that way you can lose the spirit that is likely following you before you get home. Next time you are at a funeral, go straight home afterwards if you don’t believe in pagpag. Do you want ghosts? Because that’s how you get ghosts. 

In Japan, the word for thumb translates to ‘Parent Finger’. Because of this, if you see a Japanese person walking through a cemetery, you may see them tucking their thumbs into their pockets. It’s said that doing so protects their parents from death. 

As Lucille Ball apparently knew, birds are often tied into death. Owls, crows, ravens… you don’t want any of those guys staring at you or circling your home. A bird crashes into your picture window? Move. One gets into your home? Move. Birds can be good omens as well though. Some people believe that seeing a cardinal nearby could actually mean that a loved one is checking in on you. I’ll admit, I thought that was all hubbub until after my mother passed last year. For three days after, while I was doing some landscaping work for my neighbor, I had the same beautiful cardinal hanging around me. For hours at a time. Perhaps it was just guarding a nest, but it seemed pretty calm to me. It also told me I needed a haircut and scolded me for not calling my grandmother more. 

Placing coins over the eyes of the deceased, holding your breath when you pass a cemetery,  someone walking over your future grave and giving you goosebumps. The list goes on and on. 

Before we go any further, let me run through some of the wackier superstitions around the globe. 

In India you shouldn’t clip your fingernails at night, also, don’t even think about getting a haircut on a Saturday. If you chew gum at night, Turkish people believe that it will turn into the flesh of the dead inside your mouth. In the U.K. make sure to say Rabbit, Rabbit or White Rabbit when you first wake up on the first day of each month. It’s good luck. Some people think you can just say it outloud, some believe you have to say it to the first person you come across that day. 

Brazillians believe that setting down your wallet or purse on the ground will leave you with horrible financial luck. In Portugal, walking backwards is said to be like a GPS for the devil. Rwandan women are warned against eating goat meat and while that might be a clever trick by Rwandan men to keep all the meat to themselves, it’s also said to cause facial hair growth and stubbornness. And Egypt? They have a thing with scissors. If you open scissors and then close them without having cut anything it’s sad trombones for you. You also shouldn’t leave them open. Or run with them, but that’s safety more so than superstition. 

And last but not least, in South Korea ‘Fan Death’ is a real fear. Sleeping with a fan on is a big no no there. Now in some asian cultures, there are ancient medical texts describing the wind and its ability to cause insanity or stupidity. That reminds me of a friend of mine who used to date a girl that complained of ‘wind headaches’. We found her to be both insane and stupid. But I digress. 

I can remember being warned as a child that sleeping too close to a fan could cause you to get sick. I’m not sure who told me that, but I imagine a fan blowing air into your mouth or nostrils all night could certainly cause some dryness. 

It is widely believed in South Korea, however, that a fan running in an enclosed room might and probably will, kill you. When I first stumbled upon the articles discussing fan death, the horror lover in me hoped it meant that the fans spin so fast that they detach from the ceiling and kill you ‘Final Destination’ or ‘Saw’ style. That is not the case. Pout. The concern in South Korea is that a running fan will cause nausea or facial paralysis at best and death by asphyxiation at worst.

‘Movie Trailer’ 

Coming this summer to a theater near you. Fan Death 4. 

“Ah Karen, that was the best dinner I’ve ever eaten. Thank you so much for being such a wonderful wife.” 

“Oh Chad, I am so glad you enjoyed it. Thank you for cleaning up the kitchen afterwards. You’re the best husband ever.”

“Marriage is wonderful.”

“I love us.”

***Whirling fan blades/screams/guts***

Fan Death 4!!! Rated D for Dumb.   

I’d watch that. I’ve also made a movie poster for the film. You can check it out at Curator135.com. 

And since we’re in the month of St. Patrick’s Day, let's discuss the bevy of superstitions that surround the holiday.

Saint Patrick's Day is steeped in religion. It’s observed by the Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox, Lutherans and more. The day commemorates Saint Patrick and the arrival of Christianity in Ireland and celebrates Irish heritage and culture. Lenten restrictions on eating and drinking alcohol are typically lifted for the day, which may have been where the idea of pounding cruddy green beer all day came from. St. Patrick’s Day is the most widely celebrated national holiday in the world. Primarily for the wrong reasons. Guilty.  

Saint Patrick is said to have used the shamrock, a three-leaved plant, to explain the Holy Trinity to the pagan Irish. So that may explain how four leaf clovers became a big part of the holiday, but there is still a ton of superstition, myth and folklore that is a complete mystery. 

According to wikipedia and the dictionary, a leprechaun is a small in stature supernatural being in Irish folklore, classed by some as a type of solitary fairy. As you know they are typically little bearded men, wearing a coat and hat and are often tricksters. They’re also said to be shoemakers who keep a hidden pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Interesting fact, prior to the 20th century, it was said that leprechauns wore red, not green.

Leprechauns, while myth, folklore and legend, also fall under superstition. Especially when it comes to catching one, making it tell you where his gold is hidden or searching for the end of a rainbow. Around St. Patrick’s Day, I always think of the news report out of Mobile, Alabama that went viral in the mid 2000’s. Here’s a clip.

*Play clip*

That news cast is full of people with at least enough belief and curiosity to visit the tree and get a look for themselves. And it’s hilarious. I’ve posted a picture of the artist's interpretation of what the Crichton leprechaun looks like. Also hilarious. 

In Ireland, as I mentioned, they have a lot of superstitions tied into the day.

 If you are doing some cleaning on St. Patrick’s Day, don’t drop the dish towel that you are cleaning with. If you do by accident, it almost certainly means an unexpected visitor will soon be at your door. Sounds ominous, but I suppose it could just be a crazy Aunt or someone like that. 

If your significant other ever offers a lock of their hair to you. Say no thank you.  It’s Bad luck. And also creepy. Accidentally or purposely kill a robin red breast… more bad luck.

We’ve discussed black cats already, but in Ireland if a black cat crosses your path you’re supposed to make a triangle with your forefingers and thumb and spit at it. 

When I was little, we’d make those paper cootie catchers to find out who we’d marry, how many kids we’d have, etc. in Ireland, the way they predict the future is to put a snail on a plate of flour, cover it and leave it overnight. When you wake up, the snail will have made a path, spelling out the initials of your future spouse. It’s science. 

So as we near the end of the episode, what have we learned? Not a ton, except there are some strange superstitions on every continent and in every language. We’ve learned that some superstitions can be explained, most have ancient roots and quite a few of them stem from religion. 

Why do our brains sometimes give credence to superstition? What causes us to feel like luck is either on our side or completely against us? If I’m going on a road trip and someone says ‘I hope you don’t get a flat tire’, does it really alter the course of events if I knock on my dining room table before I get in my car? 

I read an interesting article on MedicalNewsToday from a couple of years ago where “Jane Risen, a professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago Booth in Illinois and a member of the American Psychological Society, used the so-called dual process model of cognition to explain our belief in superstitions.

According to Risen, humans can think both “fast” and “slow.” The former mode of thinking is snappy and intuitive, while the latter is more rational, and its main job is to override the intuitive judgment when it finds errors. The dual thinking model is an established one, but in the case of superstitions, Risen suggests that the model should undergo refinements. The researcher notes that error detection does not automatically involve error correction. In other words, people can realize that their belief is wrong but still act on it.”

So if I’m understanding correctly, in my example from a moment ago the fast, impulsive part of my brain wants to quickly knock on wood. While the slower, rational side says, ‘this is dumb’. That side recognizes the silliness but also says, ‘what the heck, might as well.’ 

The article also states that superstitions have evolved to produce a false sense of having control over outer conditions, and reduce anxiety. This is also why superstitions are prevalent in conditions of absence of confidence, insecurity, fear, and threat. That makes sense. We can use any help we can get in some cases and in that way, superstitions can act as a bit of a security blanket. The flip side of the coin is that, when things are bad or spiraling we may look at superstitions as the bad guy to keep the blame off of ourselves. 

“I failed that math test because a black cat crossed my path on the way to the bus.”

In actuality you just didn’t study for it and chose to play video games all night. Either way though, I need to know, did you form a triangle with your forefingers and thumbs and spit at it? 

Some doctors believe that many superstitions tie in with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. That also makes sense. I do the same exact series of events everytime I see a car coming with one headlight. So maybe I believe that it keeps me safe for another day or maybe I just can’t help myself but to do it each and every time. 

As you know by now, I tend to pick a topic for an episode and then research so hard that it ends up coming out differently than intended. I try to discuss things that will get your creative juices flowing and maybe this helped in some way. There is certainly a lot of creativity and translation and molding that goes on with superstitions. 

What are some of yours? I’d love to hear them. Say hi to me on Facebook and Twitter, stop by Curator135.com and send me a message. If you like what you heard, please subscribe to the Podcast on any of the major Podcast Apps. 

Until next time, be good to one another… and be creative. The world needs you.