Citizen Science No. 10 by Jamie Zvirzdin
Superstitious By Design: How We Negotiate Chaos, Uncertainty
When I was 7, I was gifted a grotesquely vivid rabbit’s foot. Dyed two shades of purple, clinging to a gold-bead keychain, it occupied a sacred corner of my childhood drawer—a reliquary of sorts where keepsakes were stashed and semi-forgotten. At that age, causality was an ever-evolving puzzle. Did I truly believe that this amputated appendage wielded the power to tilt fortune in my favor? I don’t think so. But there was a frayed boundary between doubt and credulity, a membrane thin enough to let superstitions seep in. The foot stayed, as did the illusion of control it offered.
When we’re young, the world unfolds in found talismans and nursery ditties. Singsong superstitions are verses in the narratives we construct about our lives. I was no exception. Sidewalks transformed into mythical landscapes, each crack a fault line through which my mother’s well-being might crumble. “Step on a crack and you’ll break your mother’s back,” echoed in my head as I hopped from slab to slab, trying to balance my step cadence with the frequency of sidewalk cracks. I didn’t want to test the waters of that particular curse.
