Superstition Suspicion

“Superstition is a belief in supernatural causality: that one event leads to the cause of another without any process in the physical world linking the two events.”

My father-in-law told me that bad things usually come in threes.  He used plane crashes to exemplify this theory, which did nothing to assuage my fear of flying.  Ever persuadable as I am, I’ve been hiding in my apartment avoiding black cats and mirrors because two bad things have happened to me in the past 48 hours.

First, I had a really rough phone conversation (read: argument) with a dear friend on Sunday night.  With lots of love comes lots of emotion, so the rare tear-fest is the price you pay for a great friendship.  

Then I got this little gem of a voicemail yesterday afternoon from my mom.  Read this with an higher-pitched, cheerful voice in your head to get the real impact:  

Hi Anne, it’s Mommy.  I called your Aunt earlier today to say goodbye, and she said she really loved seeing you and that she’ll see Teddy next time she visits when it’s not so messy out.  She is hoping to come back to town for Grandpa’s birthday this spring.

Listen, after your Zumba class today I was driving your dad to St. Vincent’s hospital because his blood pressure wasn’t right and his heart rate was off.  They’re doing an EKG and an X-ray to rule out cardiac things.  So we are in the emergency room right now and I knew you would want to know.  Love you.

Translation: Your dad had chest pains and being tested for a heart attack.  The succession of bad things had begun, and #2 slapped me in the face with the cold wet palm of Father Time.  

All is okay now.  He’s out of the ER and has to meet with his primary care physician and then maybe a cardiologist.  While he waits for a real diagnosis, I’ve ordered my conservative father to completely abstain from watching MSNBC to keep his stress levels down.  Consume all the O’Reilly you want.  Just no Matthews or Maddow.  

In the meantime, the ER visit haunts all of our minds, peppering doubt into our belief that he’s just fine.  And I’m left mulling in my superstition that a third and final misfortune will befall me this week, crossing my fingers that the Bad Luck Monster does not harm another member of my family.  

But I’m not feeling superstitious because of the legend of the threes.  Nope.  I’m looking over my shoulder and walking around ladders because something paranormal happened to me in between these two events, firmly establishing my superstitions and making me think that the first misfortune may have really been a blessing in disguise.  

You see, when I left my Zumba class at 1pm yesterday and plopped my sweaty self into my car, I started thinking about the argument I had had with my friend the night before.  I took out the phone to call Ian to ask what he wanted me to pick up for lunch before I drove back home.  I clicked the number on my phone, put it to my ear and heard the synchronous buzzing of the ringer on the other end.  Then I heard, “Hi Annie.”  But it wasn’t Ian.  I hadn’t dialed his number.  I had called my dad at the very moment he was being driven to the ER with chest pains.

Weird, right?

Of course, ever the optimist, my dad didn’t tell me about his health scare when I called because - as he told me later - he felt embarrassed and didn’t want to worry me.  So he told me he was at school.

But his cell phone never works in that concrete-bunker of a school, so I would never call him a 1pm.  And I’ve never confused his number for Ian’s.  And I almost never have such distracting fights with my friend.  

Yet, these never’s cancelled out to drop a dollop of luck in a steaming pot of misfortune.

So maybe bad things come in threes and maybe something metaphysical happened to me yesterday afternoon.  Or maybe it was all just a head-tilting coincidence.  I can’t be sure.  I’m just glad I called my dad when he needed me, and I think it’s more gratifying to have something/someone to thank for the good timing.