Very superstitious, writing's on the wall.

Very superstitious, ladder's 'bout to fall.

Thirteen-month-old baby broke the looking glass.

Seven years of bad luck, the good things in your past.

When you believe in things that you don't understand, then you suffer.

Superstition ain't the way.

Hey, hey, hey.

-Steview Wonder

There I was, all of 30-something years old, driving to work on a regular work day, when out of the blue a bird came and perched on the hood of my car. I was alarmed. The thing was completely black and looked remarkably like a crow. Do they have crows in New England? A quick google search told me that indeed they do. Me, with sixteen years of superstition blasting convent education behind me, ignored the honks from other irate drivers and craned my neck for a second crow. I was darned relieved to find one - "One for sorrow, two for joy". How do you explain this? My parents may as well have burnt their money in a bonfire for all the enlightenment my education accorded me!

Has anyone done a study on why it is that we lean towards the unbelievable and unproven, suspending our reasoning in the process? There are stories of scientists (Neils Bohr, for instance) who were superstitious, so it has nothing to do with IQ. It has to do with man's fear of the unknown. Or his fear of death. How else can you explain it?