For Cully Perlman, a marriage that crosses cultures is like a lucky charm.
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Koreans, like all cultures and peoples, believe in superstitions. Not all Koreans, obviously, but many. Some of their superstitions are innocuous, others I find comical. Myself, I’ve never been a superstitious guy—I find most illogic in the world silly. I believe in gravity, empirical data, evolution, and I lean heavily towards the theory that “If you can’t prove it in some form or fashion, it’s likely bullshit.” The only thing I ever do in the realm of superstition is step around the handicap signs painted on the ground in parking lots, and the only reason I do that is because a friend of mine did it and I picked the habit up. The truth is I don’t believe anything will happen—but it’s been beaten into me not to step on the damn things. So I don’t. In a way, I hate myself for it, but it’s become custom, a routine, and I don’t think twice about it. As far as I’m aware, I have no other behavior even close to what you’d call a “superstition,” but I thought, as I’m sure you feel in some way, this stuff is oddly intriguing. So I dug around a little to see what I could come up with. And I found some funny ones.
We all know the standard, everyday, run-o-the-mill superstitions we grew up with: don’t walk under ladders; black cats crossing your path means bad luck; bad luck comes in threes; breaking mirrors get you seven bad years of luck, and so on. They’ve become nearly as insignificant as the boogeyman has become to teenagers. For me, they sort of disappeared from my conscience. Not so Korean superstitions. Korean superstitions have brought a sparkle back to my eye in terms of believing in supernatural causality.
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I was introduced to Korean superstitions the night I returned from a two-week trip to Lithuania a few weeks ago. Having traveled for twenty-some-odd hours without sleep, I was tired, but sleep wasn’t in my plans. I was jet-lagged and amped up, and I had not seen my daughter for more than a week over the past month. Spending time with my daughter was the most important thing I was going to do now that I was back. Sleeping could wait.
After hugging my wife and daughter, I sat down on the couch, and one of the first things my wife said was, “My mother wanted to kill me for cutting our daughter’s toenails.” I nodded. I rarely understand half of the things my mother-in-law says or does, and I probably don’t fare much better understanding what my wife says or does, either. I’m kidding, of course, but not completely. “She thinks mice will eat the nail clippings, turn into a human or something else, and steal my soul.” I said, “What about mine? And our daughter’s? Is either one of us safe?” My wife said I wasn’t funny. “My mother is serious about it,” she said. “I didn’t think she wasn’t,” I replied. But I had to laugh. I couldn’t not.
The craziness of it all got me thinking. There’s lots of craziness in my house, on my side, on my Korean-American wife’s side. Being a Puerto Rican Jew, I bring two sides of crazy to the table. Puerto Ricans leave glasses of water by windows when people die, just in case they get thirsty. They put pennies on their foreheads to stop nosebleeds. Hats on beds? Bad luck. Sit on a cold surface? Sorry, you ain’t having children. Jews, in turn, don’t walk over children. Or if they do, they walk back over them. If they don’t, the kid won’t grow. As a Jew, you can’t sew anything while someone is wearing it. Pregnant? Can’t go to a cemetery. And don’t even think about putting your shoes on the dresser or table. Maybe it’s because I’m used to ignoring the superstitions on my side, but I find Korean superstitions much more interesting. Here’s a list of a few Korean superstitions, some of which I’ve experienced at home:
- The aforementioned “Don’t cut your (or anyone else’s) fingernails at night—you know why, and the why is pretty compelling.
- Chicken Wings. Forget those delicious poultry appendages: wives should never feed their husbands wings—or they’ll fly away. They’ll split. They leave, and all she’ll be left with is wing sauce. I guess it varies by case whether or not that’s a bad thing.
- Fan Death. You can’t have an electric fan going overnight in a closed room. Everyone inside will die if you do. So you’ll need to suck it up. Have the fan on AND open the window. Having a blanket is, I think, okay. You may be able to get away with a door cracked, but check with your local Fan Death expert.
- Don’t play your piri (pipe flute) at night, and don’t whistle. Not at night, anyway. You do, you’ll summon snakes and ghosts. Personally I think that would be pretty cool, but I suppose a little scary if you suffer from ophidiophobia.
- The number 4, in Korea, is like our number 13. Bad juju. Except I think they have a better reason for fearing it. Four, in Korean, is pronounced in the same way the word “death” is. So it makes sense. I think. This one’s a tough one for me—four, somehow, seems like a number too common to abandon. Doubles tennis. Reservation for four. Small, even numbers, are hard to give up, in my opinion. There’s just something right about them. Comforting.
- Had your flu shot? Don’t take a shower. Not for 24 hours. Or you’ll die. Seriously. You can’t take showers within 24 hours of any vaccination. Or you will die. Let me repeat: You. Will. Die. You’ve been warned.
- Since dying seems to be a pretty popular theme, what makes more sense than not being able to write in red? It’s bad on tests and it’s bad in general. So don’t write anyone’s name in red unless they’re already dead. If you do … well, you know. It ain’t good.
- Had a dream about pigs? Play the lottery. Or something. If you dream of pigs, you’re going to have good luck with money. Tonight, I’ll be forcing myself to dream of a whole herd of pigs. Or a drift of pigs. Or a drove. A litter? Whatever. I’ll be dreaming about a lot of pigs.
- Since we’re talking animals, magpies are another thing to look out for. If you see one in the morning, good luck is coming your way. I don’t know if it matters if it’s flying, sitting on a tree branch, or what. Just make sure you know what a magpie is. And what it looks like. Hint: It kind of looks like a bird in a penguin outfit.
- And here’s probably my least favorite. After giving birth, women aren’t supposed to bathe for 30 days. Now, I don’t know about you, but that’s rough. I break a sweat walking up and down stairs, and thirty minutes after that, without a shower, I ain’t pleasant to be around, in an olfactory sense. Giving birth? That just seems like cruel and unusual punishment.
I’m not judging. I’m not saying any of these superstitions are wrong or incorrect or crazy. Really, I’m not. Okay, maybe I am, but only a little. I respect my mother-in-law and wife enough to let them fear whatever it is they want to fear. I’ll keep jumping over handicap parking spaces, just because. I don’t know if that’s a superstition, or if it’s just my friend’s superstition, I’m too lazy to research it. But I’ll keep jumping. It makes me feel better. My wife will cut our daughter’s nails before sundown. I’ll make sure of it. And from now on, I’m blasting the air—no more fans, no more worrying about fan death. And in honor of half my people, I won’t be jumping over kids anymore. That particular habit of mine always seemed a little risky anyway. But when you’re in a relationship where multiple cultures interact, you have to allow for the strange, the bad, the whatever. You can’t always have the sane, the normal, the “good.” That ain’t how it works. Well, not if you want it to last, anyway. Sometimes you just have to go with the flow. Sometimes you have to seek out the magpies.
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Photo: pobre.ch/Flickr
“but check with your local Fan Death expert.”
BWAAAAAHHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA!
Thanks, Tom.
Eduardo – yes, we’ve all got’em!
Culture Gaps have always been one of my favorite subjets.
As for superstitions, most are the cultural and social manifestation of religions. Nice to know that it’s messed up all around the world and not just us.
Actually I hope there are more articles like this in that it’s light hearted and down right amusing. My mom was a stickler about opening an umbrella in the house. I remember her almost fainting when someone did that. If you want to sell your house, you bury a statue of St.Joseph in the back yard. Get rid of a wort, rub a bean on it and bury in dirt. (never knew what kind of bean though). Smell roses meant death. Given that I took environmental design in college, I always though Funk-Sway was fascinating.
That was hilarious ….. My wife does her toe nails in bed and drives me nuts. “i’ll pick them up” she says. Yeah, right.