For someone who is definitely left-brained (logical thinker, rational, critical), my husband is surprisingly superstitious. Although he would have no problem walking under a ladder while holding a black cat on Friday the 13th, there are several other triggers I’ve come to notice in recent years.
As a senior principal software support engineer (the perfect job for any left-brainer), he is on call for one weekend a month. Much like a doctor, it means that any time of the night or day (obviously, it’s almost always 1 a.m.), he can be called to solve a high-security problem.
The fact that his phone might ring at any time naturally puts him on edge, but his mood is even worse if I mention it.
“Shh, don’t say it, I’ll get a call,” he’ll snap. “I’ve only got three more hours to go. If I get called now, it’ll be all your fault.”
Another of Grumpy’s strange superstitions occurs every time we fly. Fortunately, his wrath isn’t aimed at me — unless I say anything about it, of course. Years ago we were all handed paper tickets at the airport. Today we rely on phone apps to buy our tickets, select our seats and retrieve boarding passes. I must say it’s all very convenient … for most travelers.
“You know as soon as I check the flight, it’s going to show a change” is his constant lament. “It’ll be a different gate, a four-hour delay or worse. Do you remember that time they canceled the whole thing at the last minute and we had to start again?”
If luck were on MY side, we would travel on separate planes.
I must admit I enjoy pressing his buttons occasionally, most recently when we flew to Boston for a few days to celebrate Thanksgiving. Feeling particularly mean, I may have made the odd comment while we were waiting at the gate like, “Looks like we’ll be boarding any minute.” His neurosis doesn’t stop until we’re in the air so you can imagine the look I got for that one.
Despite all the drama about traveling over the busiest travel days and our personal nightmare last year (delayed flight to Vegas, French fries for Thanksgiving dinner), things turned out very well. I forgot all about Grumpy’s superstitions until we paid a visit to one of my favorite places on the East Coast, Salem, Massachusetts.
Having visited the famous Witch Museum on several occasions, this time we were looking for something new and found it with the Salem Witch Board Museum.
The small gallery was crammed with all kinds of “witch” boards, better known as Ouija board, and owner John Kozik was on hand to talk us through it. I imagined he would himself be a medium, demonstrating the art of Ouija every hour to make an extra buck or two, but I couldn’t have been more wrong.
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He said the origin of the “talking” board was based on superstition, created at a time when people were looking for solace during the Civil War. They weren’t so much creepy tools for contacting the dead as a way to find comfort. After all, if you knew you weren’t going to see your loved one again, wouldn’t it be better to hear the odd tap than eternal silence?
The 1920s saw a surge in Ouija popularity following the miseries of World War I and Prohibition. Spiritualists saw nothing scary about using them, and Norman Rockwell even featured a domestic scene of a couple using one on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post.
With the left side of Grumpy’s brain holding the reins, he agreed Ouija was nothing more than a game. In fact, we learned it has been marketed as a toy by Parker Brothers and Hasbro for years, with one edition even being pink one and aimed at little girls. The word Ouija, apparently, means “good luck.”
Kozik attributes the horror movie, “The Exorcist,” to the change in how people viewed the boards. From that moment on, it went from a fun way to pass time to the key to the gateway of Hades. It’s not an exaggeration to say all hell let loose in that film when the main character used one.
Just a few feet away from the museum’s pink Ouija board was a totally different display. Every year creeped out Ouija owners send their boards to the museum for safe keeping. One of the most recent was a “Stranger Things” version, with a cryptic note saying the owner deliberately did not include a return address label, finishing with the line, “Trust me, you don’t want it.” One way for the museum to collect exhibits for free, I guess.
Another display was linked to a story about a woman whose family suffered from all kinds of problems — her son eating the furniture among them — until she sent her Ouija board to the museum. Hopefully he’s now found a better way to increase his fiber intake.
That’s the funny thing about superstition. There’s not necessarily any truth to it, but our brains, both left and right side, tell us otherwise. I’m not especially superstitious but I’ll stick to my phone or computer as my communication tool of choice, thank you. And as for the rest of it, I’ll take it with a pinch of salt.
Hilary Decent is a freelance journalist who moved to Naperville from England in 2007.