I ain't superstitious, but a black cat crossed my trail ..... Poll

Anyway... back to the thread...

Slightly unusually for a Canadian prairie boy, my sports obsession (and hence main source for superstitions) is European football in general, and Arsenal FC in particular. When I was a grad student in Scotland I had a number of footie-related superstitions that came and went:

Ordering a pint only before kickoff or at half-time, never while the match was in play. OK. Make that ordering two pints to make sure I could make it through the 45 mins... I was convinced that either I would miss something crucial, or more importantly disaster would strike if I wasn't watching. And one of the few times I broke that rule, Ryan Giggs scored *that* damn goal in the FA Cup semi, so I may have been on to something.

I used to travel up to Forfar (Mom's ancestral hometown) to watch the abysmal Forfar AFC on a regular basis and of course had to stand in the same spot on the terrace every time. That one didn't really work as disaster strikes as a general rule if you're a Forfar supporter. :)

But to be honest now that I'm away from the saturation of football in which I used to live, I think most of my superstitions have disappeared as well.

I firmly believe that if a banker, lawyer, stockbroker,politician, reporter, newscaster,CEO, CFO or just about anybody who's making a million bucks or more a year lips are moving, they're probably lying. Is that a superstition?

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Originally Posted by Cangooner

I've always wondered this, and never had the chance to ask someone with 1st-hand experience... do the octopi do anything to mess with the ice surface? Or is it a matter of just getting the thing off the ice and play on?

Also, I've always thought of this as a missed opportunity for the players. You could skate over, do a quick two-step and be well on your way to preparing dinner. :)

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They are VERY slimy and leave their residue on the ice. JLA staff are very good about shoveling the ice off afterwards by tossing snow on top of the spot it landed on and skidded to a stop. Then the shovels come out to scrape the ice. NO ONE hung around the bldg. mgr. after he swung it around his head!
Octopus for dinner -- yeah! If you like chewing on used tires.

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Originally Posted by DGilloon

I firmly believe that if a banker, lawyer, stockbroker,politician, reporter, newscaster,CEO, CFO or just about anybody who's making a million bucks or more a year lips are moving, they're probably lying. Is that a superstition?

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No I think that's a perfectly rational and reasoned conclusion. :)

Cangooner:
The correct plural form of "octopus" is "octopoda" or "octopuses."

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Originally Posted by mapleleafalumnus

Cangooner:
The correct plural form of "octopus" is "octopoda" or "octopuses."

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Actually, if I can correct your correction, I think the first option should be 'octopodes' rather than 'octopoda'... :) I fell into the old linguistic trap of assuming it was a 2nd-declension Latin noun. Man, I hate it when that happens...

But either way, mea culpa.

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Originally Posted by Cangooner

Actually, if I can correct your correction, I think the first option should be 'octopodes' rather than 'octopoda'... :) I fell into the old linguistic trap of assuming it was a 2nd-declension Latin noun. Man, I hate it when that happens...

But either way, mea culpa.

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Sorry, I was going on what the nuns taught me decades ago in Latin (damn them to HELL!!). Besides, Mickey Redmond is the idiot who started all that "octopi" crap. He's got more hair now than he did 30 years ago!

Had a goalie in college who kissed his jock before every game. UUUGGGHGHH!

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Originally Posted by ScoutHikerDad

"Dont step on the cracks, it'll break your mother's back," we used to say when I was a kid. To this day, I compulsively avoid sidewalk and floor tile cracks, but not out of superstition-just one of those weird compulsions, I guess. But I also own two black cats, so you can't go by me.

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I still avoid stepping on sidewalk cracks and the blue painted lines (for handicap parking spaces) in supermarket parking lots. I also owned a black cat at one time. Hadn't thought about that in years. Could that account for the economic downturn ? :confused:

Right now there are only 3 who admit to "maybe a little" superstitious ...... but there are 13 votes so ....... :w past the graveyard .

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Originally Posted by JimmyHAD

Right now there are only 3 who admit to "maybe a little" superstitious ...... but there are 13 votes so ....... :w past the graveyard .

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Eerie observation!