Triskaidekaphobia: The Real Story of Why Friday the 13th is Unlucky
Another Friday the 13th is upon us and odds are most of us won’t make it through the day alive. Don’t feel bad, it’s just that you or those you love are probably going to be horribly maimed before you die of massive blood loss or the panic shits. Panic shits kill so many people, you would not believe it. That’s why FunnyCrave is a proud sponsor of the World Panic Shit Fund. With your help, we can wipe out panic shits in our lifetime.
Anyway, Friday the 13th has a wicked bad rap, but you may have never heard why. Fact is, 13 is and has always been straight up unlucky, and there is a reason for it that takes us into history past. Come along, won’t you?
The year was 1913 and Johnny “Sweet Sack” MacGuffin was a man about town. He had the prettiest girl in highschool, miss Mary-Louise Merkin, he was captain of the football team and he was primed to get a scholarship to Buford County Technical Institute and Haberdashery. Johnny Sweet Sack was on cloud 9. Literally. In a figurative sense.
As it happened, Johnny was on his way to meet Mary-Louise one brisk spring Friday afternoon. Friday the 13th. Kick his heels and taking to the streets in his zoot suit, Johnny was barely out the door when he tripped over Gobbles, the neighbor’s black cat and all around neighborhood pest.
“Man Gobbles, you sure are square!” Johnny exclaimed as he tumbled to the ground, scuffing his knee. And he also broke his leg. Under the scuff. “Zounds, a scuff! And a broken bone of some manner!”
As Johnny attempted to get to his feet, bracing himself against his father’s work ladder that was propped to the side of the house, Johnny stumbled under the ladder. The ladder toppled to the driveway, killing Johnny’s father instantly and breaking the mirror he was installing on the roof of the house so that the sun might be able to pass over and see just how bright and super it was. Only it wouldn’t know. It would only see Johnny’s father’s corpse, embedded with mirror bits.
“Poppycock!” spat Johnny, upon realizing he’d inadvertently just killed his dad. Probably when someone fell, some slat was spilled too.
“What a series of unfortunate events to befall me on Friday the 13th,” thought Johnny aloud. Gobbles bit him. “Gads! Rabidity!”
Hobbling on one good leg and quite rabid, Johnny attempted to make his way to Mary-Louise, assuming some local constable would see to his father’s remains. At the corner of 13th street and Edward Lane, Johnny, dazed by the pain from his broken leg, that rabies thing and massive blood loss (on 11th ave he was stabbed by a mugger who stole his last $13), Johnny stumbled into traffic. 13 cars ran over his good leg before someone took the time to stop and see what they’d just hit. Plus they ran over a lot of the rest of him, too.
Situated in room 13 at County Hospital, now with a broken leg and an amputated leg (the cars really messed up that other leg), Johnny ran afoul of worker incompetence as a nurse, who’d just enjoyed 13 shots of whiskey, accidentally scheduled Johnny for a rectal exam. The drunken nurse’s scribblings of a bum on the side of the chart were misread by someone else as the number 13. So Johnny was given 13 rectal exams. Man, what a poor quality hospital.
Later that night Johnny died of super rabies. Turns out Gobbles was super sick. With super rabies. He’d been bit by 13 bats. Tough break, Gobbles.
And to this day the vengeful spirit of Johnny Sweet Sack MacGuffin haunts the earth on Friday the 13th, ensuring no one forgets why 13 rectal exams for a guy with rabies, a broken leg and an amputated leg who just accidentally killed his dad is wholly unnecessary.
