3 Fridays Fall on the 13th : Dreaded Date Has Few Running for Clover
This is not a good year for people who are superstitious about Friday the 13th.
Today is only the first of three in 1987. There’s another one next month. (That’s inevitable when a Friday the 13th falls in a 28-day month. Think about it.) And the third is in November.
But people suffering from triskaidekaphobia--or at least those who admit to fearing the number 13--appear to be few.
California Chief Justice Malcolm M. Lucas apparently is not one of them. He is scheduled to speak today in Newport Beach to a gathering of judges, attorneys and high school students attending the fifth annual Mock Trial Awards Luncheon.
“If you jinx us, I’ll never forgive you,” the luncheon organizer laughingly told a reporter inquiring about the timing.
Margaret Hall, director of the Constitutional Rights Foundation of Orange County, which is sponsoring the event, said jokingly that the luncheon was scheduled for Friday the 13th “with great fear and trepidation.”
There really was no other time to hold it, she said. The Marina High School students who won the local contest must compete in Sacramento on Tuesday, and the local awards had to be presented first.
“With everyone’s schedules and available space and times, we came down to Friday the 13th with not much choice left,” she said.
Patients at UCI Medical Center apparently have no fear about undergoing elective surgery on Friday the 13th. “We’ve got a full schedule,” said spokesman Orman Day.
But at Western Medical Center in Santa Ana, the operating room schedule “is a little light,” admitted spokeswoman Cheryl Morosco.
One doctor, who specializes in obstetrics and gynecology, usually has a number of procedures scheduled every Friday, but he canceled all of today’s, she said. “He called (the surgery office) specifically to say he did not want to work Friday the 13th,” she said.
Dr. Ari Babaknia, an infertility specialist, said he normally schedules his laser surgery for Fridays so the patients can go home that day and recuperate over the weekend. Instead of doing the surgery today, he rescheduled the patients for Thursday, Feb. 12.
“Don’t ask me why, but I never do surgery on Friday the 13th,” he said with a laugh. “I don’t know if I’m superstitious or if I like to take the day off.”
A Few Canceled
After Babaknia phoned, the surgical nurses at Western Medical Center called other doctors scheduled for surgery today to confirm their operating-room plans. A few more doctors and patients canceled out when reminded of the date, she said.
Going into debt on Friday the 13th apparently does not distress people. Two escrow offices reported full calendars for today.
“They don’t even think about it--they’re not even hesitant,” Rhonda Bollweg, an escrow officer at Orange Community Escrow in Orange, said Thursday. “They just want their money and for things to close. We have a lot of closings tomorrow.”
The Feedback Foundation Project TLC knowingly chose Friday the 13th to schedule its grand-opening party, celebrating its new $2-million kitchen in Anaheim, which will cook meals for senior citizens. Organizers were “not at all” superstitious about the date, said office manager Karen Hamrock. “We thought it was a great time, a day that people would remember.”
In La Habra, the annual “I Love La Habra Fair” is usually scheduled for the second weekend of February, and a Friday the 13th wasn’t enough to stop it this year. The carnival rides, food booths and arts and crafts displays open tonight.
“We just realized it one day and thought, ‘Oh, well,’ ” said Marilyn Huff, program coordinator for the city’s community services department.
Annual Festival Opens
The Laguna Beach Chamber of Commerce opens its annual Laguna Beach Festival today to take advantage of the long Presidents Day weekend. There are no trepidations about Friday the 13th, a spokeswoman said.
“None at all. We expect clear skies and quite a few people,” said Karen Huntling, the chamber’s office manager. If there is any superstition, “it’s in reverse. Everything is going to go fine,” she said.
That’s also the philosophy of UC Irvine dance instructor Jillana, a former dancer with the New York City Ballet whose first choreographed ballet, “Awakening,” will be performed at 8 p.m. tonight at the Village Theater on campus.
Friday the 13th “has been my lucky day,” Jillana said. She said she was married on a Friday the 13th a little more than a year ago “because I thought it was a lucky day.”
When she found out her dance was to be performed on Friday the 13th, she was thrilled, she said. In the audience will be dance instructors from throughout the world gathering for the International Society of Dance History Scholars meeting. UC Irvine is the host school.
“I’m hoping it will bring me some luck,” she said.