“Well I know my grandmother is very superstitious, and one day we were all outside sitting on her driveway, and we were really young kids—there are three girls in the family and one boy—we are all about the same age, and we were all sitting out on the plain old pavement when she comes running out with three carpet squares. And she is yelling, ‘Don’t sit on the ground! Don’t sit on the ground!’ and we are asking why we can’t sit on the pavement. And she says because then you won’t be able to have babies. I guess there is a legend that if a girl sits on plain pavement then she will not be able to have children in the future. ”

Jelena assumed that this knowledge on her grandmother’s part was passed down from generation to generation, but that it was certainly not anything she had ever heard before. Perhaps this legend or superstition stemmed from the fact that the pavement is hot, and could burn the girls, or perhaps it was used as an incentive to make the girls not sit on the ground (and so behave more ladylike). I was unable to find any information about the origins of this legend.