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Oh, mercy me, does bad come in threes?

You’ve heard it three times. Well, perhaps three times three times. Or maybe like 3,000 times 3 billion times.

But that still don’t make it true, capsice?

There is a widely held myth that misfortune comes in waves of … yep, tres. #BadLuckThrees

This is supposedly especially true in the case of celebrity deaths.

Not sure how that theory originated, but the dark days of June 23 through June 25, 2009, didn’t do much to dispel the fable. It was during those 72 hours (yeah, three days) when Ed McMahon (on the 23rd), Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson (within a few hours of each other on the 25th) all died.

Within no time, people everywhere were claiming the threesome had fallen victim to the dreaded “death in triplicate” rule. #Rubbish

Sadly, both McMahon and Fawcett had cancer, and MJ? Well gosh, you can’t starve yourself, work constantly and gobble up mixed prescription meds for decades — including hospital-grade anesthesia — and live to be 100, you dig?

Ask any scientist and she will tell you there is absolutely no truth that disasters, mishaps and catastrophes occur in clusters of three. Okay, fine, so most of us don’t regularly lunch with Sheldon Cooper, but read any science-based article on the hypothesis and you will find the same result: They do not. We humans have just convinced ourselves of this fallacy.

I mean, I might’ve taken it as a sign of bad luck (or Calamity 1) when I lost my Ralph Lauren sunglasses while going through airport security recently. Sure, the TSA agent DID make me slide them in a bin marked with a huge, black 3, but so what?

When they mysteriously disappeared, I just chalked it up to someone “accidentally” grabbing my fave shades out of the wrong container.

Hmpf.

And yes, I suppose I could have counted the summons for jury duty greeting me upon my return home as “Bad Luck Thing Number 2.” But, um, jury duty is my civic responsibility.

I’m more than happy to check in for two weeks to see if I’m going to have to, you know, serve on some crazy big county court case that lasts for years and causes me to get sequestered and not see my kid graduate from high school and stuff. I absolutely, totally am looking forward to it. I think of it as an adventure. #JustLiedThrice

Okay, three, you’re starting to irk me a little.

And then it happened. Just as I walked around the back of my car to make a quick trip to the market to restock my empty fridge, I saw him. A cute little gray mouse lying face up on the garage floor, eyes wide open and perched between the back wheels of my car.

He was holding up a tiny sign. It read, “This is it — Number 3.” But I think that was really just a coincidence. I mean, after all, he could have meant anything by that. Besides, it was really more of a stroke of bad luck for him than me, right?

#SonOfASnapper #ThreeThingsAfterAll

Look, all I know is lots of good stuff comes in threes, too. Like, the number of peeps in my family or three-of-a-kind in poker or that third little pig who made the brick house. So there.

Besides, the very best thing ever comes in threes. #HolyTrinity

Just to be safe, though, I AM going to add a fourth daily meal.

Kimerer is a Tribune Chronicle columnist who prefers even numbers, frankly. Check out her daily blog as many times as you wish www.patriciakimerer.com.

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