Happy Friday the 13th!

April 13, 2007 /

Many people consider Friday the 13th to be a very unlucky day, the kind of day when it’s probably best to stay home with your head under the pillow.  Well, maybe not UNDER, because then, being Friday the 13th, you would probably suffocate.

In my family, however, Friday the 13th is considered to be a lucky day.  Perhaps we’re rebels, or perhaps we’re demon spawn, which puts us at odds with everyone else, but regardless of these possibilities, we do.  The reason that Friday the 13th is a lucky day dates back to when I was in the 5th grade.  Back then, in the days before direct deposit and so on, I guess you didn’t always get paid on Friday if your payday was the 15th, because my mom was going to have to wait until Monday to get her check.  And she was broke.  She had a few dollars in her wallet, and was trying to figure out how to make it through the weekend.  We had rice and beans at home, but really not much else.  Her job had her driving all over town at that point, which meant gas that she could ill afford.  And, to top it all off, there was a piece of gum stuck to her shoe.  Her hands were full of work things, going from one appointment to the next, and she would forget about the gum, until the next time it stuck on something…always at a time when it was inconvenient to get it off of her shoe.  She would scrape the shoe on the sidewalk, trying to get the gum off, but if you’ve ever had someone’s nasty spit out gum on your shoe, you know what a pain it is to try to dislodge.

So, finally, she arrived at the grocery store, trying to figure out what to buy to get us through the weekend.  This was maybe 1977 or 1978, so a few dollars bought more at the store than it does now….maybe she could get some tuna, or some eggs, and some bread…but not much more.  “What to do?” she worried.  Now, to top it all off, broke, hot day, a day of running around, stupid gum…well, now there was piece of paper stuck to the bottom of her shoe.  Ugh. She tried to scrape it off on the gas pedal of the car, tried to scrape it off when she got out of the car at the grocery store, tried to scrape it wherever she could.  Finally, exasperated, she bent down to pick it off, a task she had been dreading, because, ew, gummy dirty paper…and it was a $50 bill!

$50 back then bought a lot more than it does now, and I seem to remember that my mom came home from the store that Friday afternoon with several bags of groceries, and that we had a picnic to celebrate.  Heck, she might have even had enough left for some gas and a movie, I don’t remember.  I just remember her telling us the story of the $50 bill, and her relief that we weren’t going to have to eat rice and beans three meals a day throughout the weekend.

Happy Friday the 13th, everyone, and I hope it’s a lucky day for you!

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