Free Candy Giveaway

There are a many groups suffering with various ailments that get an inordinate amount of attention in the world today.  Kids who have cancer, AIDS patients, baby seals and Republicans, for example, are the subject of constant press coverage and fundraisers.  And that’s great because I’m sure they all suffer tremendously, but sometimes they take attention away from other more marginalized groups, like the one I’m here to talk about today.  I’m talking about the triskaidekaphobes, and we are particularly suffering this year because of our legitimate fear of the number, oh God, I can’t say it because it will bring me bad luck, well, uh, the number between twelve and fourteen.

Most years, we can take the usual sensible precautions against facing the number.  For example, we can mute our television sets or change the channel when we see a trailer for a movie that is rated between PG and R.  We can avoid walking on 12th street plus one by making sure we don’t have friends who live on that street or frequent any businesses there.  Yeah, sometimes you have to cross that terrible street when walking down an avenue, but if you hold your breath and run across it, the number won’t have much time to do its damage.  Sure, it sucks when it is between twelve and fourteen minutes after the hour, but that is only one minute every hour.  It is relatively easy to take one minute out of every hour to stare off into space and not do anything important that can get cursed by the number.  And yeah, it is even worse for us when it is that day of the month that falls before the fourteenth day, but one day is still better than an entire year, and maybe we can get through the day without mentioning or writing the date.  If that awful day falls on a Friday, we can take the day off and barricade ourselves in our rooms, because at least Friday the youknowwhat doesn’t happen that often.

This year, however, the number is unavoidable.  Every time we see calendars it is there, menacingly staring at us.  We are hounded at work whenever we have to send an e-mail or schedule something.  We can’t sign anything that requires us to fill in the date because there are only so many times you can pretend you put 2012 in the year slot by mistake.  This makes paying for anything with checks obviously out of the question.  Sure, in a pinch you can convince yourself that you are protected from the horrible number by writing in the month and then the year slots and then filling in the date in between last, so at least you haven’t written the number you get from adding six plus seven last, leaving it just hanging out there to ruin your day.

Maybe all of this trouble in our work lives wouldn’t be as big of a deal if we could come home and relax in front of the television, but we get no respite there.  We are barraged by car commercials telling us repeatedly that they are selling the 2000 and, you know, the last two digits of this year’s model.  We want to watch the news and all we get are people telling us dates things are happening or what the unemployment rate is for the first quarter of 2 x 6 + 1 + 2000.  And then you try to look away from the television and you see is that adorable kitten wall calendar that your girlfriend hung on the wall with the year right there in big bold letters, ruining the cuteness that used to calm you.  Arrrgghh, I can hardly take it anymore.  Many of us have become emotional wrecks at the thought of all the bad karma we are getting from hearing the number all the time.

Hopefully, by now, you are probably asking yourself, “is there anything I can do to help”?  Yes, there are two ways you can help.  First, you can refrain from insisting that we all need to get help from a therapist.  The number we are afraid of is genuinely evil and brings the world bad luck.  Getting a psychologist to try to trick us into thinking the number is not harmful will hardly help us.  Second, you can make a concerted effort to stop saying what year it is.  Everybody knows what year it is.  Saying it ad infinitum just brings bad luck on everybody.  For example, if you are raising awareness about the lack of clean drinking water in certain poor countries, instead of saying “it is unacceptable in the year two thousand and [the bad number] for people to lack clean water,” just say “it’s unacceptable in the year that we are currently in.”  If you are a sportscaster and a team wins the championship, saying “congratulations to the champions of this year” will do just fine.  If you are in charge of creating forms where people have to insert today’s date, maybe leave out the year category.  It really won’t be that hard.  I mean, architects have supported us for decades by creating buildings that skip from the twelfth floor to the fourteenth floor.  It will go a long way to helping us triskaidekaphobes avoid the terrible consequences we face every time we have to deal with that awful number if everybody else pitches in and does their part this year.  Thank you in advance.