Very superstitious, writings on 'The Chaff' - The Chaff with Scott Stephenson

Friday the 13th has arrived again, like a raccoon that has learned how the latch works. We pretend to be surprised every time, but deep down we knew. We always know. The calendar does not sneak up on us. It advances one square at a time, maintaining eye contact, until suddenly it is Friday the 13th and the air feels faintly judgmental.

 

On days like this, people become students of pattern. We notice things. The coffee tastes slightly off. The radio plays the same song twice. A perfectly innocent chair makes a noise that sounds like a warning. None of this is evidence of anything, obviously, except that human beings are very good at storytelling when mildly unsettled.

 

Still, it would be irresponsible not to acknowledge that Friday the 13th has a long memory.

 

Every time it comes around, the same discussions reappear. What does it mean? What should we avoid? What should we absolutely not tempt? Ladders are brought up. So are mirrors. Someone mentions a boat they once named and immediately regrets it. We nod solemnly, because this is what you do on Friday the 13th. You respect the tradition of pretending you are not superstitious while quietly accommodating it.

 

Municipalities are not immune to this. Towns, like people, accumulate habits. They repeat themselves. They circle the same ideas, sometimes productively, sometimes in a way that suggests a curse, or at least a very committed routine. If you step back far enough, you can see it. The annual debates that never resolve. The projects that hover permanently at the discussion stage. The sense that something obvious has been politely ignored for so long it has begun to develop a personality.

 

Every town has its Thing. The Thing everyone knows about. The Thing that comes up at meetings, in letters, in jokes and then is carefully placed back on the shelf for another year. It becomes part of the civic furniture. You stop bumping into it because you have memorized where it is. Friday the 13th is when the furniture moves.

 

On this day, we are encouraged, culturally and cosmically, to look at the Thing again. To ask why it is still there. To wonder if the reason we keep stubbing our toe on it is because we refuse to either remove it or acknowledge that it exists.

 

Superstition, at its core, is just pattern recognition with anxiety. It is the brain saying, “This keeps happening, maybe we should do something different.” The smartest response to superstition is not mockery, but curiosity. 

 

Friday the 13th also has a reputation for surprises. Not jump-scares exactly, but reveals. The moment when the story you thought you were in turns out to be a different story entirely. The point where the camera pulls back and you realize the clues were there all along, quietly minding their business.

 

So let us pull back, just a little.

 

Let us imagine, purely as a thought experiment, that a town had an unusually gentle and positive claim to a globally beloved cultural figure. Not a strained connection. Not a marketing stretch. Just a clean, factual, human link. A family line. A place of origin. The kind of detail that makes people smile rather than squint.

 

Now let us remember that it is Friday the 13th again.

 

This is the part in the movie when the audience starts whispering. Not shouting. Whispering. Because the answer is obvious, and we want the characters to arrive at it themselves. We want them to notice the pattern. We want them to stop circling and land the plane.

 

Friday the 13th is not about bad luck. It is about unfinished business. It is about the quiet tension that builds when something kind and sensible keeps being postponed for reasons that no longer quite hold up.

 

Which brings us, inevitably, to the reveal that has been patiently waiting at the end of this very long hallway.

 

The Thing. The Pattern. The idea that keeps returning in different disguises. The resolution that would immediately make all of this feel lighter, warmer and frankly much cooler.

 

Yes. It is the statue.

 

A statue of Betty White.

 

Built in Wingham, where her grandmother, Margaret Hobbs, was born.

 

Not because we are superstitious, but because it is Friday the 13th and we have learned to respect patterns when they become this polite and this persistent. Not because anything bad will happen if we do not, but because something genuinely good will happen if we actually do.

 

Consider this the jump scare, except it is a smile.

 

Happy Friday the 13th to all who celebrate and to all those daring dreamers who dare to dream about a tomorrow full of statues.