TEXT

Collector: What do you find lucky, what do you wish on?

Informant: I wish on birthday candles and I suppose if I ever saw a shooting star, however I haven’t. This works for me because I’ve always heard about it in stories and movies. Something lucky is a ladybug if I ever see one because my mom told me stories of ladybugs being lucky and making a wish on them as you let them fly away.

Collector: What about bad luck? What can you tell me about that?

Informant: Bad luck or superstitions like going under a ladder or seeing a black cat pass by? If I see a black cat on my path, I usually don’t feel unlucky because there is a black cat that always visits my house and I always give him food, and at one time, he was a strange black cat that crossed my path.

CONTEXT

This informant from Chicago provides me with their take on luck and bad luck, as well as how these superstitions formed. They cited ladybugs, shooting stars, and birthday candles as both symbols of good luck and something to wish upon. Whereas they spoke on superstitions they grew up being designated as bad luck, such as black cats and walking under ladders, but offer their disbelief in these rituals.

ANALYSIS

Talking to this informant was interesting because it revealed what makes something lucky/ unlucky to some individuals and how those superstitions form. This individual uses firsthand experience to dictate what superstitions they believe, and emotional attachments and stories passed on by family to determine luck. In this family, they have cultivated their own ritual of catching, releasing, and wishing on a ladybug as it flies away, symbolically releasing the wish into the world.