What Are Those Words Again?
We have a Friday the 13th coming up this month. Therefore, we have two words to introduce: Paraskevidekatriaphobia and Triskaldekaphobia.
The first one is defined as “Fear of Friday the 13th” and the second is “Fear of the number 13”.
They are hard to remember, and hard to spell – but a sizable minority of people on earth at any given time are actually scared to death of that prime number and the Friday upon which it falls. We don’t like departing an airport at Gate 13, or sit in the 13th aisle of any plane, train or bus. So many people don’t want to stay in a hotel room on the 13th floor that many high-rise hotels use that floor for maintenance rooms, or skip the floor altogether.
Sometimes, as in this year, we only have to endure one Friday the 13th but during other years we often have two Fridays the 13th and on rare occasions there are even three of them in one year (remember the year 1987?).
We seem to have shed much of the superstitions that plagued our ancestors, such as worrying when a black cat crosses our paths or walking under a ladder. That number 13, though, still gets to us. People just don’t like it.
We aren’t sure of the origin, but tradition states that on the night of the Last Supper, Jesus ate with his Twelve Apostles. Adding Jesus to that number lengthened the total present to 13. One of those apostles, Judas Iscariot, betrayed Jesus to his death, which tradition also states may have happened on a Friday the 13th.
There have been disastrous events on Fridays the 13th throughout history: On Friday, September 13, 1940 the German Blitzkrieg destroyed much of London, England. On November 13, 1970 a massive cyclone killed over 300,000 people in Bangladesh. On October 13, 1972, a Rugby Team flying from Uruguay to Chile crashed in the Andes – and the survivors weren’t found for two months. I won’t give details on how they survived – but it was indeed very unlucky. They made a movie about it. And we can’t forget Friday, March 13, 2020 – the day that the Covid pandemic was declared a National Emergency. What was to last a month endured instead for two years. Mask mandates, anyone?
Additionally, although this did not happen on a Friday the 13th, the defenders of the Alamo in San Antonio from late February to early March of 1836 were able to hold off Santa Anna and his troops, until the 13th day. We all know, lamentably, how that ended.
However, when weighing the disasters of the world, many terrible events actually happened on other days. The Titanic sank on Monday, April 15, 1912. Abraham Lincoln was assassinated on a Friday the 14th in 1865. World War I was caused by the assassination of the Austrian Archduke on a Wednesday in the summer of 1914. The Stock Market Crash (called Black Friday no less) occurred on October 25 in 1929 (and actually, the market started spiraling downhill in early September – and yes, there was a Friday the 13th in September that year. Coincidence?). World War II began on a Friday, but on the first of September, not the 13th, in 1939. The attack on Pearl Harbor that hurled the United States into that war occurred on a Sunday morning, December 7, 1941. Even Julius Caesar was assassinated on a Wednesday, the Ides of March (the 15th), in 44 B.C.
Weighing the odds, then, Friday the 13th isn’t worse than any other day. Bad things happen on any day of the week. And thankfully, good things happen too, on any given day as well. Did you know that the first fossilized dinosaur egg was found on Friday the 13th in 1923, in Mongolia? That’s rather exciting, at least to anyone under the age of 12.
Still, it’s nice to know there are words for our preoccupation with that number (triskaldekaphobia), and the consternation upon the Friday that coincides with it (paraskevidekatriaphobia). Try not to let the words, the number, or that certain day this month ruin your life. Or your day.
Pass them on, if you can remember them – I honestly don't think I can!
