Context: 

This piece was collected over a casual FaceTime in which we were previously just catching up and talking about our elementary school experiences. We are close friends who met in high school and have known each other for five years. My informant (JS) was born in California and is now attending Carnegie Mellon as Computer Science major. He enjoys coding, playing video games, and weight lifting.

Main Piece:

The following is transcribed from a conversation between the informant (JS) and interviewer.

Interviewer: Can you repeat that again, the one about eyelashes?

JS: So when an eyelash falls on your cheek, and you don’t know about it, a friend mentions it to you and you have to guess on what cheek the eyelash is, right? So if you guess the correct cheek and you manage to blow it off without, like, using a mirror or using your hands, you get to make one wish and it will come true! However, if you don’t, um, pick the correct cheek, you’ll have bad luck for the rest of the day, but it’s not like, major bad luck, it’s just, mild *laughs* 

Interviewer: And do you believe in this? And where did you learn it from?

JS: Um, I heard about this from my sister, I think. She brought it back from school. Hmm, I don’t believe it, but my girlfriend definitely believes it *laughs* so I always mention when one of her eyelashes falls down. Oh yeah and she’s from Pasadena. 

Thoughts: 

Wishing upon a fallen eyelash is an old practice. From what I’ve heard, blowing an eyelash away protects the person from witchcraft or the Devil, because the Devil tries to collect as much human hair from a person as possible in order to control them. For this reason, it makes sense to me that blowing an eyelash away would give the person good luck, because they evaded evil, but it was new to me that picking the wrong cheek would give the person bad luck.