Friday the 13th

It is Friday the 13th, the third one this year, the most a year can have. Sometimes it is only once a year. This time around, after Friday the 13th in February and March, it is November’s turn to host one.

The day is often considered an unlucky day, actually a bad day to the superstitious, and that sentiment has not had a shortage of following, making the day aka Black Friday. 

The combination of Friday and the number 13 as an evil day is recent. Independently, Friday and the number 13 have a longer dark history that I won’t recount. Dramatically to Christians, the betrayal of one of the 13 in the Upper Room on Thursday resulted in the crucifixion of Jesus on Friday. Lika is a Norse trickster who intrudes on a dinner for 12 gods; he is therefore the 13th creature, an interloper who messes up the menagerie. 

The ancients consider 12 as the complete number (e.g., 12 months, 12 signs of the zodiac, 12 gods of Olympus, 12 tribes of Israel, and Jesus’ 12 Apostles) making 13 an unwieldy number. The Jesus story and the Norse myth point to Friday the 13th in a long history of sentimental bad luck.

Friday the 13th is a movie series out to scare us out of our wits since 1979, with a TV franchise devoured as a deadly horror suspense thriller, made more memorable since the movie crossover with Freddy Krueger’s terror in Nightmare on Elm Street. Already, installments are scheduled until 2017. 

What is it about being scared that fascinates us, I asked on Hollow e’en? Is it the illusion of control since these stories are only on movie screens and TV projections lasting only until after the designated hour is over? Then we breathe a sigh of relief until the next show when we artificially pump up the adrenaline again?

The dramas of our lives are contrived. It is like the tsunami warnings that we foist on our alien population. Have you ever watched foreigners on Beach Road hightail it to the hills because our island’s finest blue warns of a tidal wave coming to our lagoon? Has high waves (tsunami in Japanese) ever gone past the coral reef on Saipan?

Although the CNMI (Saipan) records a tsunami only every three years, it is low of risk as the waves are not big enough to cause any damage. A look at the historical record and we are clear that the drama of a tidal wave is needed to push a nudge higher the rise of the adrenaline on an otherwise tedious and sedate island life. 

We are not alone in our sentiments. The San Andreas fault is projected to slide into the Pacific anytime soon. San Francisco may not be shivering in fear, but doom saying is abundant and lucrative business in the city. It is projected that L.A. will have a major earthquake within the next five years. I heard the same prediction in the mid-’60s. The construction boom in L.A. does not seem to have many folks worried. But the purveyors of tragedy are countless.

I lived in SoCal summer ‘66 commuting from South L.A. to the Luau on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills every morning (two hours on two buses) to sort out evening receipts, add up and record the take, then bus boy at lunch, and later wait on tables at night with lamp lights on dining tables attired in purple-lapelled white shirts like Indo-Malays of Singapura. I served “brewed” coffee by pouring hot water on instant coffee powder in the kitchen, a quickly learned practice. It was a daily Friday the 13th laughs that summer, though May had the only Friday the 13th that year.

No one laughed when I accidentally poured seven steaming cups of coffee on the back of a backless gowned customer out with friends and husband for an August Friday evening dinner. Her irate husband stood up, biceps larger than my thighs, ready to pound me into the floor, but the wife was kind enough to point to the unrolled lunch salad canoe floor mat that caused me to trip. 

My colleagues quickly rolled up the mat and smoothened customer relations. The chef, noticing the scowl on my face after retreating to the kitchen, informed me that the only liability of the house is the cost of the dry cleaning of the dress and it was not going to come off the tips. He sliced me a piece of pie and told me to grab a cup of coffee and a chair. I was visibly shaken and trembling. I just turned 21.

I took a bus ride the end of that summer from L.A. to Lexington, KY on old Route 66, now parallel to Interstate 40 traversing Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Tennessee before heading north to Kentucky. I had $63 left of summer earnings. 

The coalition of the Disabilities Network Partners planned to meet today to collaborate and coordinate efforts, avoid duplication of services, maximize use of resources, and by intention, to allay kneejerk fears of the day. A disability forum intervened at the same time. It is Friday the 13th.

Today is also World Kindness Day, slated every Nov. 13. Created by the World Kindness movement, it encourages folks to be kind to one another.

Superstition or authenticity, your call.