Triskaidekaphobia

I’ve never been superstitious. Knock wood on that!

Actually, I have one superstition. I don’t know if it is a Scottish thing, or just a family thing, but I am very superstitious about trimming photographs. The less rational part of me becomes very uneasy whenever it occurs.

This became apparent to my wife not long after the wedding. Prior to marriage, we discussed career plans, children, finances and what habits one of us (me) would give up.
Curiously, the subject of trimming photographs never came up in conversation.

One fine Saturday about a month after the wedding, she proudly hands me an album. My interest was feigned at first as I took it but upon opening it became quite genuine.

OMG as the young texters write, You Cut Pictures!

She had trimmed pictures here and there, in order to get them to fit on the pages. I’m having trouble writing this even now.

I suddenly felt the need to sit down, although I don’t believe I actually lost consciousness. My wife in the meantime was quite worried, wondering if her new husband was about to expire permanently. I know I was sweating and I’ll wager I had turned snow-white. This was bad. This was real bad. This was The Titanic Has Hit An Iceberg Bad!

A few moments later, I had recovered enough to explain to her why I became so upset, and then like a gentle missionary speaking to some savage group of headhunters on a distant island, I told her with as much gravity that I could possibly muster about her injudicious folly and gave her dire warnings about never doing it again.

She said, “That’s silly”.

That’s silly? That’s silly?

Good heavens! The headhunters have rejected the missionary and are rubbing oil and spices all over him! They can’t understand the horrible path they have chosen! She is the love of my life and I can’t save her!

But I continued to try to get her to see the error of her ways and finally she turns and says “School Photos”.

I swallowed hard. I knew where this was going.

She said “the wallet sized photos all come on one sheet. Your parents had to trim them.”

I said nothing, and refrained from thinking about at least fifteen years of school photos, six to a sheet and quite intact, in the envelope they came in, in a case in my parents closet.

But she figured it out.

“Your parents never cut them up and put them in wallets?”

I stayed silent.

“Why did you think they sold wallet sized pictures?”

I didn’t answer, and had never really given it much thought, but thinking about it now, I guess I figured it was just a way of making money. Anyway, most of the pictures were awful. Who wants to see a nine-year-old with a forced smile and so much Butch Wax in his hair he looks like the progenitor of Jimmy Neutron?

With time our marriage re-stabilized, and while I suspect my wife still cuts photographs to this very day, she must do it when I’m not around. I rarely open albums though.

Happy Friday the 13th!