{"id":8720,"date":"2016-07-25T20:40:27","date_gmt":"2016-07-26T00:40:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/?p=8720"},"modified":"2019-05-15T13:51:18","modified_gmt":"2019-05-15T17:51:18","slug":"feeling-unlucky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/?p=8720","title":{"rendered":"Feeling unlucky"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I went to the fitness center today, I saw a half-dozen friends who asked how I was doing. They all know about my long recovery<\/a> from brain surgery and are solicitous of my health.<\/p>\n

I told them about Tom’s stroke<\/a>. Several of them gave me a hug or patted my arm, and expressed sympathy and support.<\/p>\n

But with two\u00a0of them, a strange thing happened. They got this look of horror on their faces and physically backed away from me. Then averted their eyes. Left quickly.<\/p>\n

You might think, “Well, they just didn’t know what to say.”<\/p>\n

To me it felt like a primal reaction: \u00a0Get away from bad luck or you will become unlucky.<\/p>\n

It’s a very old superstition that luck, good and bad, is contagious.<\/p>\n

Everybody loves a winner because they’re perceived as lucky. We want to be around good luck so that it rubs off on us.<\/p>\n

But when someone looks like a loser, or their good luck has changed to bad, we avoid them. As though the evil bad-luck spirit could reach out from them and grab us.<\/p>\n

Some superstitions are grounded in reality. Infectious diseases, negative attitudes, dangerous crowds all have a contagion. Instinct may guide us away from them.<\/p>\n

Strokes aren’t contagious, and it wasn’t bad luck that caused Tom and I to have them.<\/p>\n

So friends, please stay near.<\/p>\n

You don’t have to know what to say. Hugs are always welcome.<\/p>\n

Today’s penny is a 2014, 7 plus 7, a year that was neither lucky nor unlucky. One person’s lucky 7 doesn’t prevent the next person from rolling a 7.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I went to the fitness center today, I saw a half-dozen friends who asked how I was doing. They all know about my long recovery from brain surgery and are solicitous of my health. I told them about Tom’s stroke. Several of them gave me a hug or patted my arm, and expressed sympathy … read more Feeling unlucky<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8728,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[320],"tags":[36,1135,1134,95,484,20,556],"class_list":["post-8720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-shelter","tag-36","tag-contagious","tag-evil","tag-luck","tag-stroke","tag-tom","tag-winner"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8720"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8720\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8751,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8720\/revisions\/8751"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}