I CONDUCT AN EXAMINATION OF THE THIRD LIST
Moving on, I looked at the third list in this allotment, the ‘List of Days Usually Considered Fortunate with Respect to Courtship, Marriage, and Love Affairs in General.’ It held surprising insights as well. The accompanying notation stated that ‘females born on the following days may expect courtships and prospects of marriage which will probably have a happy termination.’ As I studied this list, I noted both my mother’s birthday and her sister’s birthday appeared on this list. Come to that, so was my father’s birthday, a date otherwise on the ‘unfortunate’ list for males. Another date on this list was my parents wedding anniversary.
Both my mother and my aunt stayed married to the same men for decades, had children who were mostly a credit to them (looking at you, M.), and their marriages ended only with my father’s and my uncle’s deaths in 1995 and 2001 respectively. But my birthday also appears on this third list, and I’m happily a spinster. So far. Yet. But again, it could’ve been purely coincidence I had personal examples in my own family history to support this third list’s contentions.
So I personally had positive and negative examples in my family history which pointed to the veracity of these lists, however much I wanted to see the designations of ‘lucky’ and ‘unlucky’ as arbitrary. This seemed like one of those divinatory tools tailor-made for the would-be divination scientist. The more the results of an experiment can be replicated among various parties, the more established science is inclined to grant that the theory born of the result might, just might, have legs. An idea was forming in my mind.