Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Superstition

Today is my brother John's birthday. He was born on Friday the 13th, which is notoriously a bad luck day. My mom says that she was terrified to go see her new baby for fear that he was disfigured in some way simply because of his birth date! We all laughed at how silly that seemed. He of course was a normal, healthy baby, despite being born on such a bad luck day.
I should mention that years later he sure gave our parents a run for their money and quite a few gray hairs, but I still don't think it has anything to do with the date of his birth.

Fast forward the clock 47 years to when I was preparing for the birth of our second daughter. Giuliana's due date was April 20 but I was to have a scheduled C-section. The doctor naturally picked one week before my due date, and came up with April 13. Not a problem until I looked at a calendar and discovered it fell on a Friday that year. Oh no! For some reason, I suddenly became superstitious. I know that believing in bad luck and superstitions is just silly nonsense. So why I was so concerned about our daughter being born on that day is still a mystery to me. I was embarrassed to tell the doctor of my concerns, but he had no problem changing the date to the 12th. Phew.
Now I'm not so sure the date change was such a good idea. Particularly because I can't imagine Gia being any more naughty than she is now! Should we make "Thursday the 12th" the new bad luck day? Oh, of course I love her endlessly and wouldn't trade her for the world. It just goes to show you that superstitions and bad luck are all a bunch of hooey!

So, Happy Birthday to my dear, MUCH OLDER, not so bad luck brother.
I hope it's a great one.

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