If you spill salt, it's bad luck.
If you immediately throw some salt over your left shoulder, it cancels the bad luck.
(In reality, you now have salt all over your floor.) π
Don't step on a crack
Or you'll break your mother's back
I still avoid stepping on cracks.
If you pull out a gray hair and two more will appear in its place. Yeah, right.
Sitting too close to the television screen will make you go blind.
(Actually was once a time when sitting too close to your television set could harm your health. Evidently, General Electric produced color TVs back in the 1960s that emitted up to 100,000 times more radiation than federal health officials considered to be safeβand while the television sets were recalled almost immediately, the superstition remains.)
Bad things come in threes.
Pretty much anything can "come in threes," if you frame it a certain way. And maybe it's because it's so easy to convince yourself of the fact that bad things come in threesβafter all, this idea surfaces pretty much every time a celebrity passes away.
Pick up a penny on the sidewalk for good luck.
I seem to recall I sort of believed this one when I was a young kid. Back then, a penny was worth something - five would get you a candy bar (and a lot bigger than the "fun-size!") These days? I doubt anyone bothers.
I don't know why, but there are a lot of myths and superstitions around pennies being lucky.
shareSwallowed gum takes 7 years to digest.
Um...nope. Whew.