Monthly Archives: February 2012

Baseball Superstition

My informant is a pitcher on the baseball team, and he told me that the first game that he started this season he had gotten  a brand new pair of baseball socks from the manager, because the ones he had been wearing had too many holes in them. That night he had a really good game and won. From then on, he says that he has been wearing a new pair of socks every time he has gone out to pitch.

It wasn’t anything he planned on doing, and nobody suggested that he do it. Neither him nor I had ever heard of another instance of a person who did the same thing. There have been instances in sports where players will, for good luck, do things like where the same socks or other articles of clothing, or use the same equipment (like a bat or shoes), while their performance is good. My guess is that he subconsciously feels that by wearing new  socks every time he pitches he is somehow starting fresh, free from the memory of the successes, and failures, of the past.

Knock-knock Joke – Amy Fisher

A. Knock Knock.
B. Who’s there?
A. Amy Fisher.
A. Amy Fishe…?
B. … BANG!
This was only a couple years after a girl named Amy Fisher went to the door of the house of a man named Joey Buttafuco, whom she was having an affair with. She asked him to leave his wife and when he refused she went to his house and shot his wife in the head. This can be an example of a kind of disaster joke, these are risky because for a certain time after the initial incident, people can find the joke inappropriate.

Laughter is good medicine.

This is a phrase my mom first told me when I was a young child. She used it when she would do or say something to cheer me up when I was feeling down, after which she would say, “Cheer up, laughter is good medicine.” From then on she always reminded me to have something in my day that would make me laugh, for she said it would actually make me feel physically better. Every once in a while when I was little, and I wanted to watch cartoons and my mom didn’t really want me to I would try to persuade her by saying, “But mom, laughter is good medicine.” That always made her chuckle a bit. The phrase actually came from the Bible, out of Proverbs 17:22. It says, “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine.” My mom also told me that she read in a medical journal that doctors will actually have patients watch or read funny material, and some how it actually makes them feel better.

…From my lips to God’s ears.

My informant told me that a friend of hers used to say this phrase as sort of a superstitious prayer. It was sort of the opposite of the knock on wood superstition. The way it worked was that whenever my informant’s friend would talk about her kids, or her grandkids, by saying, “little Timmy’s so talented, he’s gonna be a fine doctor some day.”, or, “ That kid’s got a great arm, he’s gonna be a great ballplayer one day.”, immediately after she would say, “From my lips to God’s.”
There’s no getting around the fact that parents want the best for their kids, and I don’t doubt that there are a number of other similar types of sayings throughout the world. As I said before this saying is very similar to the knock on wood superstition, however instead of trying to ward off bad fortune, “From my lips to God’s ears” attempts to bring good fortune.

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

My informant once gave me this phrase as words of encouragement. He told me that he had used it many times for himself when he was faced with some difficult task or situation. He was a singer, and he also acted in plays, and when he was preparing for an audition he would use this phrase to ease his nerves and prepare him for the difficult competition against his peers. My informant did not know the precise origin of the saying, however he mentioned that he remembered that John F. Kennedy recited it in his inauguration address. I believe he used it to express the fact that the road to success for the United States was too long and difficult to expect immediate results, that patience be the key.