Best Reasons for Exchanges?

[PepperElf]

And, dating back to my days in the theater, don't whistle on stage, don't wish someone good luck, and you always call it "The Scottish Play."

You know I've heard that before... i guess this is why. interesting!

my grandfather believed that it was unlucky to put shoes on a table,

I thought it was more of a hygiene issue rather than a luck/unlucky issue. Some people get picky about having something that's been on your foot & on the ground being placed on a surface you eat from.

Same with elevators - no 13th floor.

i think that's going out of style now? I know I've been in some Navy buildings where they just didn't care to pretend the 13th was really the 14th.

[Gurndigarn]

i think that's going out of style now? I know I've been in some Navy buildings where they just didn't care to pretend the 13th was really the 14th.

Nope. I was recently in a hotel that didn't have either a fourth or a thirteenth floor. It was attached to a convention center, that I assume got a fair number of Chinese people through it.

[Ironclad Alibi]

I am not superstitious, but I do feel a little odd when I leave a tip of $13.00.

As for the Number of the Beast, see this list, or this one.

[Pagan]

I don't subscribe to the superstition that certain numbers are unlucky - in fact the number 13 has been incredibly lucky for me, and I usually end up getting good news on Friday the 13th.

Sis and I decided it's a lucky number too. Plus back when she turned 13... yep, her birthday fell on Friday the 13th!

It's actually considered good luck to be born on the 13th. Like I was, and my parents (all different months), and a friend of mine that has the same birthday as me.

And look at the American flag (13 stripes) and how many 13s crop up on the dollar bill.

she freaked out when mum went in to their unit first on New Years Day instead of letting my dad or brother (some Scottish tradition)

First footing.
http://www.rampantscotland.com/know/blknow12.htm (below the "Auld Lang Syne" verse)

My Gran threw a broom after us, bristles first. My Mum and I looked at her, thinking 'she was quite sane even seconds ago...' Grans's explanation: It's a way to "sweep" the merchandise out of the house, ensuring good sales, but it has to be bristles first! Uh yeah, well I don't remember if it worked or not.

Sounds a little like sweeping widdershins (counter-clockwise) to sweep out negative energy.

[EricKei]

Well, while I will admit being superstitious from a young age (growing up in New Orleans will do that to you), I feel at least somewhat justified in my dislike of Friday the 13th -- I have had one relative die on Thursday12th and get buried on the 14th, making that Friday the day to field endless sympathy calls from relatives that made me feel WORSE -- and a different relative die ON Friday the 13th (different year), who got buried two days later -- on my birthday.

A city near to me has the telephone exchange of 666. At one point the phone number 666-6666 was available

I know several people who would PAY to have that as their phone number, if it were to become available.

My buddies with whom I watch football games and play RockBand with have their own set of supserstitions -- violating them has gotten at least two people "uninvited" from all football games as a result, over the years.

In RockBand, tho, I managed to get myself out of banned from singing that particular song, simply because I prefer to bust out "FOUR! ONE! ONE! The Nuuumber of the Beast!" during the chorus of the song in question

I've always hated that "knock on wood" thing and everyone I know does it...drives me crazy.

I have heard one reason why people do that -- in theory, back when tables and other items were more likely to turn up infested (read: be wormwood), people thought that the worms/vermin in the wood would carry ideas down to Hell and give them to that red dude in charge if they heard humans saying something that might give same amusement or bad ideas of his own. Thus, they knocked on the wood to distract and/or confuse the little buggers, who would then forget the message.

[Cia]

The telephone prefix for Keystone, SD is 666. Always knew that little town was evil.

[Flying Grype]

666: one summer my best friend lived upstairs from me in our dorm. My room was 233 and hers was 333. We called her room the beast divided by two.

I don't know why I didn't think to call it Eric the Half-a-Beast...

The apartment building I lived in most recently didn't have a fourth floor or a thirteenth floor.

[Fudgethatkay]

4 is a bad luck number is Asia. current Japanese, and Chinese languages, it's the same sound as "death"
9 is also bad in Japan, as it sounds similar to old word for "suffering", so you can't give gifts that comein sets of that number.


Also, in weddings, its bad luck to give anything that severs, like knives, or scissors.

[KatherineB]

I would happily pay to have any numbers with multiples of unlucky numbers, AND I would use that as my business number to see if that would act as a lucky charm to keep away the SCs! (I'm opening my own business early next year and am trying to forestall the suck...)

[RealUnimportant]

How about 1-444-666-1313?

[Shalom]

Here are a couple that haven't made the thread yet:

My mother told me that her grandmother absolutely insisted that she chew on a piece of thread whenever she (the grandma) was sewing something that she (my mother) was wearing at the time. Something about not sewing up your wits. The idea is that shrouds are, or once were, sewed onto corpses, so by chewing the thread you were demonstrating that you weren't dead. I do this to this day, but only to make my great-grandmother in Heaven happy.

Hey, it couldn't hurt.

She would also destroy any photographs she found of herself. We only have two extant: one my grandfather took from an upstairs window when she was in the street, and one (rather underexposed) one that he sneeked through the hinge side of a door while she was in the next room. They had to hide those from her or she'd have destroyed them as well, and my generation would never have known what she looked like.

Then there was a guy I was at grade school with who was absolutely convinced that if I stepped over him on the ground, he wouldn't grow anymore. He was dead serious about this, to the point that if anyone actually did step over him, he'd grab the guy and physically force him to step back in the other direction, which apparently reversed the curse.

As for the 616/666 thiing, depends on how the Beast spelled his name. 616 = N(e)ro C(æ)s(a)r, 666 = N(i)ron C(æ)s(a)r. (The bracketed vowels don't count in gematria.) I think the N is the aramaic pronunciation.

[BroSCFischer]

When I worked in the grocery store, and a total came up $6.66, I'd ask people if they wanted to get "a pack of gum or something" and pointed to the total. About 50% of the time they did.

SC

[Merriweather]

When I worked in the grocery store, and a total came up $6.66, I'd ask people if they wanted to get "a pack of gum or something" and pointed to the total. About 50% of the time they did.

SC

I wouldn't change a total on a random purchase, but I don't think I'd like a regular payment every month on a bill And I definitely wouldn't want it as a license plate, house number or phone number. It doesn't scare me, but going that far would make me a bit uncomfortable.

[Ironclad Alibi]

Speaking of evil numbers, I had a coworker whose license tag was SET-666.

Set is another name for Satan.

[fireheart]

I also did some googling.

There's a superstition that brides wear a veil to protect them from the evil eye.