Superstitions...

I was thinking about my team's success this year, in particular I had been thinking about our relatively surprising run at the NCFL Grand National tournament, as it is relatively unprecedented to have one team in the late eliminations, much less two teams. I flashed back to each of the elimination debates, where before each debate, there is a coin toss to determine which team will get to choose the side of the debate they want to defend (as you can imagine, it is largely advantageous to be affirmative, but even if you choose not to affirm, it means YOU'RE choosing, which makes things better, regardless of the circumstances). Either way, winning the coin toss, whether it's causal or correlary, makes it much easier to win debates. I'm not normally a very superstitious person, but when it comes to debate, that changes. Before every coin toss, every coin toss my team is involved in, i will repeat, every coin toss, i leave the room, trying to be as far away from the toss as i could be, feeling my mere presence somehow forces the coin to the opposite side than we need/want/prefer...As I was rapidly trying to leave the building before the octafinals (sweet 16), i remember someone asking me why I left, and I told them that when I'm not around for a coin toss, the odds go back to 50-50, and when I'm present, we never win (which may not actually be true, but I haven't seen a coin flip we've won in over 10 years, and I've seen us lose about 15 coin flips, so I just try to be gone. It also gives me ample opportunity to pace, stress, and worry about losing the coin flip...

...another superstition i have is related to the game of poker. i am a mathematically driven poker player, and i usually play hands based off a variety of mathematical pieces of information, so it means i can end up playing any given two cards...except the starting hand of pocket 3's. FUCK POCKET THREES. I have no logical reason to believe as i do, as I understand that, mathematically, this hand is no worse than other absolutely awful hands i have been known to turn over (3-2 unsuited, for example). For years and years, the pocket 3's just booted me in the junk, and it seemed that pocket 3's were always on the back end of me losing a bunch of fucking money (I actually keep stats, and by the mathematics and empirics, i should feel this way about pocket 10's and AQ suited, which have each cost me more money in the last 2 years than pocket 3's, when i still played those rotten motherfuckers). I found myself needing to make a decision, and it ended up with me not playing pocket 3's. Not even for free. On the big blind. Won't even see the flop for free, waiting for the possibility of getting fucked with the low end of the full house or having my trips not be enough. I get made fun of by my poker playing friends, and I couldn't care less. We all have our issues...

...this leads me to the blue polo shirt. I got the idea from Tiger Woods, who I imagine thought his shit out more than I did. I wanted to do this, had given it a fair amount of thought, and that night, we all drove home (tournament was at Diablo Valley College, which is a kitty's paw swipe at the testicles, but we did nonetheless) and i ended up getting painstakingly drunk the night before, so when I woke up, I grabbed the first clean shirt that was acceptable to wear around high school kids, which just happened to be a blue polo. I wore it, and we won the tournament. I'm a dork, so I'm the kind of guy that keeps stats about shit like this, and here are the numbers- outrounds wearing the shirt, in 3 years -31-16 as a squad, and the days I don't wear it, we're 2-11. Think what you want to think, but it seems that we win when I'm wearing one (i now own many). Do I think it's actually tied to us winning? Not at all, but I'm packing three for NFL's...

...I also find myself following another superstition that seems tied to the debate experience. The first year I was at my current job, I had been to tournaments for 9 weekends in a row, and so the decision was made for me to get the weekend off, and the only time I showed up at the tournament was the qualification round for NFL's, which we lost (the only round I was there for, I lost). So the next year, I decided to not show up at the tournament AT ALL the next year, fearing my mere presence may have jinxed the situation- and we qualified. This year, I had the same fear, did the same thing, and we qualified again. Is there a correlation to my not showing up and our winning? No. We win because, when it's all said and done, we have one of the top teams in the district, and I know that has much more to do with it, their monumental levels of preparation, unique and powerfully adaptive skill set. And I know that. But will I still leave the room before coin flips? Absolutely. Will I try to not be present for the NFL qualifier again this year? Hell, yeah (and I ain't gonna lie, I hate, like Buck Nasty hates, the NFL qualifier like a guy hates getting kicked in the balls)....

...but then i started to think about it...why do i have superstitions? And, more specifically, why do I have the specific superstitions I carry? Why am I superstitious about these things, but couldn't care less about stepping on a crack, walking under a ladder and breaking a mirror (all things I've done before, in fact, all in one, really drunken evening (the best thing about that evening is nobody asked me why i was carrying a Tupperware container of mashed potatoes). I figured that things I have superstitions about are all related to things that actually matter to me. It would be relatively fruitless to be afraid of walking on cracks in the road if you lived in an area where there were no sidewalks, it wouldn't matter if you needed to wear your lucky Giants hat when you went to the game if you didn't care about the outcome. My love for debate and my love for poker means that I do whatever I think needs to happen to guarantee success for these things. I guess that's probably where superstitions came from in the first place, just crazy shit we hope to interject to hopefully influence something that can't be controlled by shit like this. In the same way that I make fun of myself for somehow thinking that my merely watching a game means we lose (didn't watch, would listen or follow online) Minnesota Viking games for the greater part of the '90's, because I was convinced my watching meant we lost. I only decided to watch again when I MOVED to Minnesota.