It was a dreary Monday morning in the fall of 2010 and I was on my way to Redwood Middle School. My mother was driving after having picked up our carpool, and we were en route to school as per usual — or so we thought.

Suddenly, while in the backroads of the Golden Triangle, the car screeched to a halt as my mom gripped the steering wheel, peering over her windshield. I jolted out of my Monday morning daze and looked around frantically, searching for some large obstruction in the road, blocking our way to school.

Rather than the fallen tree or electricity pole I was looking out for, I saw a tabby cat slinking away into the shadows.

Oh boy, here we go again! I thought to myself.

My mom is extremely superstitious and cannot let small things like this go. Though the common superstition is to not drive past when a black cat has crossed the way, my mom’s version includes any colored cat (or sometimes, large squirrels — she never takes a chance).

We proceeded to wait for a few minutes until another car crossed the way. It felt like ages to us as we were watching the clock tick away the minutes before the late bell would ring.

Like cats, spiders are another living creature that are very ominous to superstitious people. My mom, however, lets this rule extend to any kind of bug found in the house. Rather than squashing anything with a shoe, she is more likely to be found coaxing any type of insect onto an old envelope and carefully leaving it outside.   

The list of her superstitions gets even more obscure: not walking under a ladder to avoid bad luck, avoiding haircuts on Saturdays and not cutting nails at night — just to name a few.

My mom also follows the superstition that requires you to throw salt with your right hand over your left shoulder after you spill some by mistake. But this has always confused me — isn’t that just spilling more salt than was spilled in the first place?

When asked about her superstitions, my mom says that she was introduced to them by her grandmother and they’ve stuck with her ever since. Though she can never explain exactly why any of her superstitions make any sense, I’ve accepted her superstitious nature as a quirk and hope to be able to understand more about them in the future.

For now, I’ll have to settle with being exasperated every time a spider crosses the threshold of my house and I can’t touch it.