I am not superstitious, thank you very much. I don’t get scared of black cats or broken mirrors or ladders or anything of that sort. Sure, I cross my fingers and knock on wood occasionally, but that’s more out of habit than any real belief that placing one finger over another will actually change the outcome of a certain situation.

I guess our culture has raised us to believe in silly superstitions like “Step on a crack, break my mother’s back,” and “Find a penny, pick it up and have good luck.” For goodness sake, we have a whole day set aside on March 17 to wear green and flashy four-leaf clovers, and I don’t know much about St. Patrick, but I highly doubt he would approve of us running around pinching people to commemorate him.

We need only think about it for a moment (or listen to Stevie Wonder’s song, “Superstition”) for countless superstitions to flood into our minds. Personally, a lot of superstitions I picked up were from the middle school days. Other girls would fix my necklace if the clasp was in front and “steal my wish,” or tell me to hold my breath when we passed a cemetery on the volleyball bus. Of course, I didn’t question any of this at the time, but as I have matured, I now continue to breathe by cemeteries because I don’t really feel like joining the corpses anytime soon. I don’t choose to waste time believing in such petty, stupid ideas.

I am not superstitious. Everything I do is just for fun. When I lose an eyelash, you better believe I make a wish before blowing it off my index finger, but only because it brings back some nostalgia and puts a smile on my face. I do not actually think my wish for world peace will happen anytime soon. And please don’t think wishing for world peace is some noble characteristic of mine because honestly, I find it rather stressful to think of a wish when put on the spot while people are singing “Happy Birthday” over small flaming sticks on my cake. So “world peace” is my go-to. I don’t know that I believe “world peace” is attainable or even something worth striving for, but I’ll save that thought for another column. The point is, I am not, and have never been, superstitious.

There are a few things I do that might be categorized as superstition which are simply for the well-being of others. Black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day, anyone? I’m not a fan of those little beans, but I eat them every year because I don’t want to jinx my family’s luck. It’s nothing about me–it’s about my family. Then there is an unnamed teacher who coaches the UIL journalism team and is one of the most superstitious people I have ever had the pleasure of meeting. For competition we have lucky folders, lucky notebook paper, lucky pencils, and fun-shaped lucky erasers. It’s a whole lot of superstition and at first I cackled and participated for the sake of my teacher, but now I’m not going to tempt fate after being to regionals two years in a row.

I know it may seem that I am superstitious, but I’m not. I strongly dislike superstitions. I want Punxsutawney Phil the groundhog, who sees his dumb shadow, gone, and I find nothing wrong with 13th of a month landing on a Friday. So maybe I cross my fingers and make wishes on eyelashes, but I can assure you, there is no way that I am superstitious.