Dark Thoughts, Superstition or Actual Disaster-Prevention? You Make The Call

It’s Friday the 13th and while I love the number 13, contrary person that I am, many consider it an unlucky number. Triskaidekaphobia, or fear of the number 13, is illustrated by the 13 people present at The Last Supper, or by the 13th card in a Tarot deck (Death, which is actually a good card connoting change; see below); some airlines don’t have a row of seats designated as Row 13, and hotels and building often skip Floor 13 altogether.

The origins of 13’s unluckiness (although it is a lucky number in Italy) are debated and not discussed here. That’s what Google is for. In any event, we are beyond The Age Of Enlightenment and have passed into a post-modern world where we believe, all too readily, whatever passes in front of us or on our cell phone before us, and where we pause all too rarely to consider the deeper meanings of things in our world.

Below I’ve listed a few things that are probably not worth too much consideration to most normal people but which nonetheless have taken up valuable space in my brain for decades. I’m not Obsessive-Compulsive but, as a friend and I like to joke, I do exhibit [clinical] “features” of this serious condition; I can focus a little too intently on dangers, real and imagined, present and future. If you’re not too afraid to do so, here is a taste of the inside of my brain on a good day. Fridays the 13th are nothing to me.

Catastrophes-in-waiting? Or good-ol’ common sense?

Crane, looming high overhead but still incredibly close.  Solid base, but soooooo top heavy! It’s windy today: is there a risk? It happened in Seattle last summer (a crane fell over in high winds, killing people), but I anticipated this possibility ages ago, you know.

Look up! There are workmen working up there, above your head, perhaps on some shaky scaffolding. People can let things slip, can accidentally kick things over the naked edges of the scaffolding – fuck, there aren’t any sides to the scaffolding! Falling objects accelerate, their force increasing over distance: F=ma, one of the few vestiges of my physics knowledge (Force = mass times acceleration). The presence of moderately heavy tools such as hammers is implied, up there on the scaffolding.  When I was barely 10 years old, my mother told me about that woman who walked underneath some men working with tools: a workman dropped a hammer, it landed on her head and left her blind. Do you worry about this happening to you?

Ladder. Maybe there is a can of paint balanced on an upper rung; maybe there is not. Do you walk underneath the ladder because it is blocking the sidewalk, or do you go around, even if you have to zig into the street for just a mo’? Cans of paint are heavy and, when falling from even a moderate height, can really damage a skull.

Living in a city, you are certain to encounter street work in progress on gas lines with actual gas in them. The gas lines may be exposed or not, but the drilling is active and real. How close to them do you dare walk? Do you say ‘hello’ to the workers and risk their momentary distraction? It must be a constant challenge for them to keep steadying their weird-and-powerful sparky metal tools as well as their drills, keep them from slipping and thus producing a speck of fiery potential. Sparks and gas lines: definitely un-mixy things.

One-way street:  do you look both ways? Once? Twice? What if you’re in London and you are not 100% habituated to walking or biking or driving on the other side and besides, there are one-way streets in London so the cars can defy logic and still come up from the other way when you’re not expecting them to, even though you’re aware that you’re in London? Is it so dangerous that you can no longer compose a proper sentence??!?

Even though your beloved pressure cooker is one of the mainstays of your cooking arsenal, do you ever look at it askance as it hisses away, its contents under great, scalding, explosive pressure? Is that metal rim really, truly strong enough to withstand that pressure atop all those hard little chickpeas that rattled like ball bearings when you poured them into the pot? Did you screw on the lid properly or is there an improper seat of the lid on the pot? And even though it is too late to do anything about it now, do you let it just keep pressurizing away until it might possibly explode? Do you??

Do you think about your current location in the event of an earthquake striking at this very moment, especially when you live in a city where The Big One is more than 300 years overdue?  Do you really need to be driving over this bridge or through this tunnel right now? Or ever?

You were the last one to go out the back door. You took out the composting and it is garbage night, for heaven’s sake. You are ever-diligent re locking the

back door, usually, but did you really lock it properly this time, or lock it at all??  It certainly doesn’t help matters 30 minutes later when you’re lying in bed, about to let sleep clasp you in its heavy embrace, and your husband leans over you – with full knowledge of your nightly final backdoor check (and its purpose) just ten minutes ago – to murmur in your ear, “Are you absolutely sure you locked the back door??”  

Finally, is it possible to plan the perfect murder? Just wondering. 

Maybe that’s just me…

Bonus: Paranoia Check

Is it just me, or does this freezer-on-the-bottom refrigerator look like it is flashing me? 

What bothers you when you’re out and about in the world?