Superstitions

I was talking to a friend earlier about superstitious beliefs they have in the family. Apparently she's not allowed to play patintero because her spirit might be taken permanently by engkanto. Of course I shared my share of superstitions that I had to live with growing up in a superstitious family environment. I've dropped a majority of those already but I still follow some of them, reasons will be stated later.

So you think you're hardcore when it comes to superstitions? Check this list out.

- If you sneeze before any road trip, you will be attracting accident.
- If you sleep with your feet facing the door, you will die.
- If you sleep face down, your parents will die.
- If you sleep with your head horizontally higher than your parents, they will die.
(granted you sleep in the same room)
- If you do any striking actions at night(hammer, knocking, pounding) at night, somebody in your family will die.
- If you dig or turn soil at night, somebody in your family will die.
- If you keep a coinbank (any coinbank), somebody in your family will die.
- If you play sungka (bantumi), either your house will get burned or your family will die.
- If you wear black, a loved one will die because death is attracted to the color of black.
- If you cut your nails at night, somebody dear to you will die.
- If you dream of losing a tooth, somebody dear to you will die.
- If you dream of fire or water, you need to bite a metal object in the morning to avoid bad luck.
- Skeletons on anything (like shirts or keychains) are bad luck.
- Turtles on anything (like shirts or keychains or toys) will give you sloth or make you slow.
- Sweeping at night will cause one of your loved ones to die.
- If somebody skips over you, you wont grow taller anymore.
- If somebody cleans up their plate before you are finished, you will never get married.
- If you cry on somebody's coffin, you will give them an agonizing afterlife.
- Walking under the ladder is bad luck.
- A broken rosary is bad luck, it needs to be disposed properly (like in a church).
- Using spoon to remove the remains from a plate is bad luck.
- If you don't pass this list to 20 of your relatives, you will die by being eaten alive by a giant carrot.

From this point of view, it actually looks like a checklist from death himself.

What's scary is that it took me less than five minutes to write all those. They're still in the "quick reference" section of my head. I didn't even include the "good luck" superstitions there. I think it's safe to say that I lived a childhood where there's much to fear, but somehow the fear came from more of not the consequences they entailed but the punishment I would be getting if I got caught violating any of those.

So you may be thinking now I may have had a troubled childhood and it may have affected my personality.

Maybe.

Anyway like I said, I don't follow a lot of them anymore, but I still keep certain practices alive like not walking under the ladder, not keeping coinbanks, and not cutting nails at night for practical reasons.

When I have kids, I'd probably give them these superstitions too, if only as a joke. Because hey, if it helped keep me stay very still when I was supposed to be at the wild-tasmanian-devil point of my life, it must be very effective.

Because if there's one thing worse than the boogieman going out to get you, it's doing something so damn mundane and cause the death of your entire family. (Nobody wants to go to jail, trust me. Not even kids)

Superstitions rule.