Urban Legend

Paraskevidekatriaphobia is the fear of todays date i.e. Friday, the 13th. The origins of the significance (or lack of it) of this date have been subjected to lots of assumptions, rumours, or plain heresy in the past but the most common one remains the legend of Jesus being crucified on 'Good Friday' and there being 13 people present at the famous last supper.

More reading on the issue reveals that the sixth day of the week and the number 13 both have foreboding reputations said to date from ancient times, and their inevitable conjunction from one to three times a year portends more misfortune than some credulous minds can bear . I have to remember a friends band which was in fact called 'Friday the 13th' and how this Korean fellow I knew back in college REFUSED to go see them play for fear of these unholy men trying to affect his better judgment and belief in the almighty. We had been smoking some pretty potent shit back then though.

Some sources say it may be the most widespread superstition in the entire world in general and the United States in particular. So much for my moms vintage billi raasta kaat gayi and doing an extra 70kms to avoid that road story. There are people out there who are in fact more paranoid than us Indians.

Some people won't go to work on Friday the 13th; some won't eat in restaurants; many wouldn't think of setting a wedding on the date. I have been refused sex on the date personally, just like most other days of the year though.

Interestingly, the time when I owned a bbc computer, back in the early 1990s, I had heard about something called a virus and how it attacked specifically on Friday the 13th. I remember having had taken the fuse out of the house's main line on friday/13 once, leaving no chance for the mofo to even harm my moms imported coffee grinder. I had actually thought, and more than one of my friends would corroborate this, that a virus was a worm that travelled physically into your machine through electricity lines and gnawed at the components of your computer and other electrical appliances.

My father hit me with a stick the next day though, when he found out he had spent an evening in the dark for no good reason. I'm still a little convinced that it is that, an organic worm, though I dont have the stamina to fight the infidels who walk this earth and dont think a virus is a living being.

Paraskevidekatriaphobics ( yes thats what they call the phobics; wonder the etymological underlay) are people afflicted with a morbid, irrational fear of Friday the 13th. I'm just glad I've managed to dodge the affliction of superstition. And if I'm here to tell you more about it later than this day, I would have successfully survived it too.

Touchwood! ;)

Happy Friday, the13th...