If you take a picture with three people in it, the person in the middle will die. ARMENIAN IMMIGRANTĭon’t ask your dog a question. If you eat the end of the watermelon, your father will die. The only difference is, we don’t so much call them superstitions anymore as valid psychological insights or hard-won strategies for coping with urban life. And what with microwave radiation, AIDS and complex new technologies, we have many new things to be superstitious about. Immigrants are pouring into Los Angeles, throwing their beliefs into the cultural stew. Nor are we suffering from any shortage of new superstitions. Last month, for example, members of the psychology department at Pierce College in Woodland Hills flew into an uproar when the administration assigned the number 1300 to their building they were afraid that superstitious students would refuse to take psychology courses there.
We may not still believe that toads cause warts or that when teen-age girls lose their virginity, tiny clefts in the ends of their noses disappear, but plenty of other illogical notions remain. But when it comes to an everyday belief in superstition, it turns out we’re not all that different from our ancestors of the Middle Ages. WE MODERN-DAY Angelenos think of ourselves as a calm, cool, rational crew.
