Superstition

 

    Throughout my life I have always thoroughly enjoyed the fact that I have never had a bad Friday the 13th. It feels great every time I get the opportunity to drop kick superstition right in between the eyes. After realizing that my work schedule and under-the-weather-ness could potentially throw me into some unsavory circumstances I wasn't about to give the 13th the satisfaction of hearing me admit it was a bout of bad luck. I was given a route with an early morning appointment with my other appointments spanning the afternoon and evening with hours of mind numbing free time. Considering I work an hour from home I had to pass the time on the road. How could I prove to the 13th it wouldn't get the best of me? What could I do to stick it to the fates and say I will not live shackled by chains of curses and misfortune? I could..... I COULD..... spend my free time actively racking up as much "bad luck" as I could by doing every unlucky thing I could think of (or google). "To Walmart!" I screamed in a horse, unforgiving voice and I set off empowered by my new thirst for rebellion. As I knew the breaking of any mirror that resided in my home or on my truck would not be in my best interest I sought one out. 

     If being smashed by a hammer is a mirrors equivalent of dying with dignity then it was a beautiful ceremony. If not then at least it was quick and somewhat painless.

     While at Walmart I also initiated a one man game of limbo that continued throughout the rest of my work day. Meaning, of course, that every time I saw a ladder I walked underneath it.

      Ladders were not the only things I kept an eye out for. In fact I had quite the list of things I was hoping to come across. One of them being umbrellas that were to be immediately opened indoors.

     Find a penny pick it up and all day long you'll have good luck? I don't think so. Every penny I saw with the heads side up I refused to pick up. Quarters, nickles and dimes were still free game of course. 

    Probably the most difficult challenge was to force a black cat to cross my path. Even after paying a visit to the main office that is normally crawling with at least 13 billion cats at any given time I could not find the devil-spawn anywhere. I finally found one later on in the day. He was mangy, menacing and only had half a tail. The perfect cat to harbor bad luck if ever I saw one. Unfortunately the demon seed would not pose for a picture so instead I offer you Felix. Felix is a dark gray cat that I see most often around the office. He isn't black but he doesn't mind getting his picture taken so he'll have to do for sake of visual representation.

     With only a year of high school theater class under my belt I never took to saying 'break a leg' instead of 'good luck'. I always liked to think that it was less superstition and more a way for jealous understudies to verbally express there desire for advantageous mishaps and not be reprimanded. What I didn't know was another way to welcome bad luck beside wishing good luck was to say Macbeth in the theater. Granted I said it in a movie theater but it was the best I could do.

     People throw spilled salt over their left shoulder because of the old tale about the devil always standing behind you. I have never held a superstition about spilling salt but I have always thrown it over my shoulder anyway because the idea of throwing salt in the devil's eyes makes me smile. This time I didn't. Next time Lucifer. Next time.

     Oops, my luck fell out. How careless of me.




    To rap the night up I sent myself a chain letter and immediately deleted it. I hate it when social media tries to guilt me into sharing something. Whether I support the notion or not it irks me. Chain letters are no different. No one can tell me what to do! ...except my mom........and my wife.
Luckily neither of them initiate chain letters.

    In the end it wasn't just a salvaged day but a masterpiece of a day. Purposefully doing everything I could think of to hypothetically sick the demons on myself was less of a war on superstition and more of a war against my own pessimism and despondency. The whole idea of being cursed with bad luck is an excuse to be self-defeating. Sure chance can be for us or against us but when we decide to blame our bad attitude and missed opportunities on a meaningless act bringing misfortune upon us we're festering in our own self pity instead of moving forward.


    Most of the time we bring bad days or bad luck upon ourselves due to poor expectations. My attempt to have a great day instead of a terrible one proved once again to me that people don't have to have a bad experience if they don't want to. Better yet our having a good day can influence those we interact with to feel better about their potential problems too.

Busy Busy

Between living my first year of marriage, finishing my degree, applying to Optometry school and working 60 hours a week any chance to stop and reflect on my experiences in a post has been difficult. Even when the dust settles and I have a moment to sit down behind the computer I find it nearly impossible to choose a topic to address. There are so many:

1. My newish job

2. Graduation

3. Being married

4. Our trip to Oregon

5. Figuring out my career path 

6. Our anniversary 

7. Social experiments

8-2034…. ect.

I finally decided I just need to bite the bullet and pick one. I'll talk about the other ones later or simply leave them to your imagination. I’m sure you could come up with some stellar scenarios that would make me out to be legendary. That is how legends are born after all right? Lack of information and no shortage of embellishments to fill in the gaps? I have faith you can pull it off.

Anyways after taking some time off and heading to visit my Grandpa in New Mexico I finally have some time to focus on a topic. The topic that will be decided, of course, be rolling a 6 sided die and assigning each topic a number (excluding social experiments and ect. naturally. There are some things you just can’t know if the experiments are to work. You understand).

So the topic of the day is…

My newish job? Fair enough. It wasn’t that long ago that I talked about the wide variety of jobs I’ve had in the past. After graduation we made the wonderful/terrible decision to live with my folks so we could save up some money while trying to get into Optometry school and/or figuring out contingency plans. Upon coming home and beginning my job search my Brother suggested I look into being a pest control technician. Not long after I was certified, had my own truck and was expertly assassinating critters with biochemical warfare.

 The irony of this development didn’t hit me until I had been exterminating for a while. Back when I was a young tyke in elementary school I had somewhat obtuse career goals. Each year when teachers would inevitably ask us kids what we wanted to be when we grew up I was surrounded by the usual answers. In a classroom of potential Firemen, Astronauts, Policemen, and Athletes I was the weird kid who wanted to be an Entomologist. Perhaps I liked being different, perhaps I got a kick every time people (including my teacher) had no idea what that was, but mostly I liked bugs. A job where I got to study them sounded like heaven to me. I found them fascinating.

Look! bugs I recently found.
This Dragon Fly has some cool markings.
The blue color is striking and the wings are made up of fun patterns.
They can fly forwards, backwards and side to side.




Look at the size of this thing.
Brings me back to my days in Texas where everything is bigger.
Not something we see often in Nevada.

um.....
..............
................... !!!

 At times I wonder how miniature me would feel if he somehow found out that my living is made by seeking their destruction through raining pyrethroid death on their colonies and nests. Instead of studying the way they live I study how I can more effectively make them die. How laughably similar and yet opposite my childhood aspirations and adulthood realities have turned out to be. It’s hard to take a child’s dream job seriously when experience tells us just how many things will change between elementary and college graduation. But those early interests and obsessions can still impact our way of thinking and our personal development. The reason I chose to work toward a career in Optometry was because my poor eyesight gave me lots of experience in an eye doctors office and I could easily see myself in that capacity. In my attempts to prepare myself for Optometry school I took the necessary classes, immersed myself in appropriate extracurricular activities, taught, researched and narrowed my interests. After years of focusing all my efforts on following that course things have not been working out the way I hoped they would and we’ve had to do some very serious reevaluating.

Looking back with new perspective at all of the skills and interests I gained and built upon trying to be an Eye Doctor I discovered a love I have not only for certain subjects I studied but for teaching those subjects. A love I would have never found if I hadn’t pushed myself so hard to achieve my goals in Optometry. I fell sort in some aspects while superseding my expectations in others redefining my limits and my strengths. Whether I end up a Doctor, teacher or something completely different this was a powerful lesson to learn.

I guess that covers the topic of Figuring out my career path too. I have always been fond of killing two birds with one stone.

I am an exterminator after all.