Superstitions In Foreign Countries
Have you ever heard of a superstition that someone had that just kind of made you think "WTF?"
I was reading a post by @itchyfeetdonica this morning, where she said you can get a discount in China if you get a phone number with 4's in it. Apparently, that's an unlucky number there. I'd take a number with 4's for a cheaper phone bill! Heck yeah!
She asked me if I've heard of any superstitions like that... and it just made me want to post about it because I haven't thought about it in awhile...but YES. I've heard some that seem SO weird to me. It's funny how something can seem so weird to one person, yet so normal to another.
Warning: If stories about 💩 gross you out, just stop reading and hit that x button
Weird Central American Superstition #1: If you take a laxative and a pregnant woman sees you afterward, the laxative won't work.
I could be entirely wrong here. It was 8 years ago when I heard about this one, and my Spanish was still developing back then.
But see, what had happened was, I was living with a Central American host family at the time... and my guy friend and I had eaten something that made us really sick to our stomachs. My friend's host mom said she could help heal us or whatever since we'd both eaten something that made us sick.
Next thing you know, I somehow got roped into letting this guy's host mom rub my entire body down with some kind of oil and then make me swallow a "purgante (laxative)." She pressed hard, too. It was actually pretty painful. But no pain, no gain, right?
So far, so good, I guess...
When she was done, I awkwardly told her thanks for massage violating me and said I needed to go home before the laxative kicked in.
I wasn't at all prepared for her response.
What she said next horrified me.
"You can't go home, because you live next door to that pregnant woman, right?"- Her
"Yeah. What does that have to do with anything?" - Me
"We can't risk her seeing you. If she sees you, the oil and purgante won't work. We'd have to start all over tomorrow." - Her
"I can't stay the night here. I really think my host mom would get mad if I didn't come home tonight." -Me
"I'm going to call her and let her know what's going on and that you're going to have to spend the night here." - Her
I wasn't worried at this point. I knew my host mom would see how unreasonable this woman was being.
I was wrong. My host mom also said that I had to spend the night there and that I couldn't go home!
I just took a purgante. I was about to start exploding brown fireworks from the depths of my abdomen at any moment.
And there was only one toilet in the whole house.
And it didn't have a seat on it.
And my guy friend who was also sick had taken one as well.
Gulp. This was a recipe for disaster.
Were we supposed to fight all night over this toilet with no seat and just play a game of "whoever craps on the floor first loses?!"
This was literally my worst nightmare. I was being held hostage in what was literally about to become a "shit show" of doom.
Against all odds, I ended up surviving and am still alive to tell you about it.
Central American Superstition #2
Remember that pregnant woman who caused so much trouble in the story above?
Well, I got to see her baby because it was born a couple of weeks before I left the country:
Notice that red bracelet on his ankle?
When a baby is born, they put a red bracelet around its ankle in the hospital. It's for good luck. Or for protection and to keep the "bad things" away. Or... maybe because if someone sweaty touches the baby it will die?
Again, I really could've gotten that one wrong. But I mean, it makes sense. We were ALWAYS sweating. There was no AC and it was always 110 degrees out. Someone, please help clarify this Central American red bracelet thing. Maybe they were joking with me when they said that the baby would die if someone sweaty touched it.
I wouldn't put it past being real, though haha.
I'm not too upset at the pregnant woman because she was actually my friend and the sweetest neighbor ever. Here's us, and an akward pic of me from forever ago...I don't think I even look like this anymore:
Do you know of any strange superstitions?? I'd love to hear about them! I hope you liked my crappy stories, hehe.
I would have told her that I'll take the chance of it not working. There's no way that I'm going be risk cleaning up poop off the floor. Or just tell her that North Americans have immunity to pregnant women.
Hahaha crap, why didn't I think of that?
Wow! I didn't know most of those!
I had read about 4 in Chinese. Apparently, it has the same sound as "death". The one about the pregnant woman looking at you is horrible :O
BTW, I was reading a novel a couple weeks ago called The Windup Girl, and it's based in Thailand! There's a lot of superstitions about buddhist stuff, some trees, monks, events. The whole thing is crazy, at least in the novel.
Oo that sounds interesting! I think I should collect some superstitions from Indonesia! I think I've already got a good one! The lady I'm living with says she won't wash her hair until her time of the month is over because the cold water from the shower will make her blood clot up and give her cancer. Not sure if that's a superstition or what lol
those are some pretty strange superstitions. #4's !?! lol. I would totally take that phone number if it meant i'd get a discount!
Being on laxatives at someone else house would be my worst nightmare hahaha.
I personally do not believe in superstition. I think its just people looking for patterns in random events. When something happens we tend to ask ourselves "why did that happen?" and then we look back at the most recent event that took place for the answer. Sometimes we conclude that the two events were related - even though they are often completely unrelated. This is because our brains are wired to look for cause and effect scenarios as a survival mechanism. I wrote a post about some of the psychology of superstition a while ago but no need to read the post, the just of it was - Pigeons are superstitious. Thats pretty much how I feel about superstition hahaha. Just my opinion though lol.
Great post. Your humor comes through in your writing :)
My Spanish teacher in Guatemala said that when she was pregnant, she got rid of all her stuffed animals and pictures of animals in her room. She said that you see too many animals while pregnant, you can give birth to an animal, or a person that changes into animals at night.
I think it was a Mayan superstition.