Don’t Step On That Crack: Superstitions, wives tales generally far fetched
February 2, 2010 • Cora Jaeger, Staff Reporter
Filed under Feature
Do you ever cringe when a black cat crosses your path or someone opens an umbrella in your house? What about when you swallow your gum, do you worry about how long it might be in there?
“I used to believe that every time you step on a crack, you’d break your mother’s back.” junior Julia Jordan said. “I think the craziest [wives tale] I’ve heard about is probably that when your nose itches, someone is thinking about you. I mean, come on.”
It seems like some things our parents tell us aren’t always true. As our parents handed us a piece of gum when we were kids, they almost always warned about swallowing the candy. The common threat against this was, “be careful not to swallow it, it’ll stay in there for seven whole years!”.
Most likely our parents told us this just to be careful not to choke. According to snopes.com, chewing gum passes through our body at the same rate as any other food we digest.
“I knew about that one,” Jordan said of the gum. “But it’s still probably not very good for you.”
With everything from curing warts and Friday the 13th, to the common day legends of hand sanitizer, wives tales and urban legends have plagued the U.S. for years. Fortunately for most people who have cable TV, we’re able to watch Mythbusters on Discovery Channel every Wednesday at 8 p.m.. Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage, along with a crew of other trained professionals, test out urban legends to determine whether or not they are busted, plausible, or confirmed.
Jordan, a fan of the show, likes the episode where an American Civil War soldier impregnated a woman after being shot in the groin and having the bullet continue on into the woman in question.
“It was called ‘son of a gun’,” Jordan said of the myth test. Although it seems a possibility, the myth was considered busted since the abdominal wound would have killed the woman.
Even though most superstitions, wives tales, and urban legends are based in truth, many are just too farfetched to believe. All in all, it’s really up to you, and perhaps the Myth Busters, to decide their worth.
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