Stupid-stious

Are you superstitious? Or are you above all that?

I get a kick out of reading about other people’s superstitions. You know, some baseball player wears his lucky socks every game – inside out. How silly. We all know that only hard work and practice will affect his game, not some smelly old socks (don’t you just love the ‘don’t wash the luck out’ codicil?). But he clings to his ritual in the hopes that he will create a winning streak. Defying all logic, he doesn’t stop, even if he loses a game. Makes for good copy. Harmless fun. Unless, of course, you’re the virgin being thrown into the volcano…

Despite my usual logic, I too have fallen victim to just such a fallacy. It all started one year when the Veteran’s were doing their annual Poppy fund-raiser. These old WWII vets stand in the middle of a busy intersection soliciting donations. Now if that’s not a blatant attempt by the VA to thin the herds of benefit seekers, I don’t know what is.

So I slow down and give the guy some money in exchange for a poppy. I love veterans, and the flower is so much better than those God-awful Tootsie Rolls or hard candies other groups give out. I give them just a quarter and tell them to keep the gunk.

Poppy – opium – World War I – mustard gas – I think there’s some connection here, but I’m not sure what. Wait! Check this out!

"By the end of the 1930s, Christchurch RSA was even making an oversized Poppy for motor vehicles."

Anyhoo, I decided to wrap the poppy around my rear view mirror as a decoration.

Somehow, I must have had that poppy on my Vette when we took one of our cross-country extravaganzas. You know, the ones where the car breaks down in some memorable way; in a less than convenient locale. Fan Belt – Oklahoma City, Transmission - New York, Fuel Pump - southern Illinois, Brakes – Montana. You get the picture.

So we go a whole trip with no breakdowns. Hmmm. Must be the poppy! Need to get a poppy every year and put it on the car. Sounds great! A talisman is born.

Fast forward two years…

Poppy installed, I’m heading down the highway and hear a ‘thwick- thwick- thwick- thwick-thwick’ sound. Hmm. Need to report that to Al. Could be something. Or not.

(Female Readers: Don’t you just LOVE trying to convince the man in your life that the car is making a sound that indicates a major repair lies just ahead? Are you told to turn up the radio? Or worse yet, “I don’t hear anything,” and its partner phrase, “It doesn’t do that for me”. I’ve heard fuel pumps going, transmissions giving out, lifters wearing, bearings going out…)

So this continued for some time. I would hear the noise only at certain speeds, or on certain days, never anything I could nail down. The car never broke, but I was certain doom was just around the next S-curve. Until…

I sheepishly realized the noise was coming from the damn poppy! They have this big white tag on them identifying the Veteran’s organization. Whenever the car got to a certain speed, the wind whipped the tag causing it to ‘thwick- thwick- thwick’.

Disaster averted. Superstition cured. The poppy now goes in the glove box.

I mean, just in case.