Explaining superstitions?

GARDNERVILLE, Nev.

We humans are a curious animal. We're always trying to make sense of our world and sometimes the end result is quite strange or even comical. I'm referring to the numerous superstitions we have. My grandmother, Nettie Melton, was very superstitious but also had a huge sense of humor about most of them. One that always upset her was hearing the sound of the mourning dove outside the house. She always said if they cooed for three days straight, someone was going to die. She'd even go out and try to get them to leave when they were sitting on the telephone wires in the front yard. I always wondered why it didn't apply to the neighbors and how these little birds knew so much about the future.   

It seems that she got this idea because my grandfather died after the mourning doves were sitting outside for three days. That was in 1965 and I can't tell you the number of times the doves sat outside her home, or even our home, over the next 23 years and we didn't have another death in the family. That's probably how most of these stories get started. We make a connection between two isolated incidents so we can "blame" someone or something for what happened.

Grandmom always insisted that if you came in the house through the front door or the back door, you had to leave that way. No one was allowed to leave through a different door than the one they came through. I remember the first time I ever did this after she died in 1988 I kept looking over my shoulder for something bad to happen. Of course it never did, so then I'd make a game of it and go in one door and out the other. 

We always got a laugh about avoiding the cracks in the sidewalk. Remember the one that says, "Step on a crack and you'll break your mother's back." We sang the jingle as we walked the streets in downtown Jacksonville. Perhaps it was a way to keep the kids occupied so they didn't have to hear us ask a lot of questions about where we were going or when we'd get there.

This one made me laugh: If you get a chill up your back or goose bumps, someone is walking across your grave. Please explain this: Are we alive and kicking when the person walks across our grave or do we get chills after we're buried? Students will love this one: If you take a test with the same pencil you were studying with, then it will remember the answers. So that's the trick to acing the tests. For Valentine's Day, it is said that if a woman sees a robin flying overhead, she is going to marry a sailor. If she sees a sparrow, she'll marry a poor man and be very happy, and if she sees a goldfinch, she's going to marry a millionaire. I wonder if any of these birds will be flying in the storm tomorrow.

Have a ramblin' good week.

n To reach Gail Davis, e-mail RuhenstrothRamblings@yahoo.com or call 265-1947.