I'm Major Jackson and this is the slowdown.

I'm Major Jackson and this is the slowdown. slow down. One mother of a player on my son's lacrosse team would not sit in the bleachers during a game.

Emma Pearl believed if she took a seat beside other parents,

her park body would jinx our children's team and cause a loss.

And thus, she opted instead to walk the periphery of the field, the entire game, even during halftime.

I understood.

We all at some point perform passed down rituals to impact the world in our favor.

In some instances, to protect ourselves and loved ones from unwanted outcomes, with so much unpredictability around us, any effort to gain control over

our so-called fate seems worth making, even the most irrational gestures.

Such rituals are culturally fastened to our personhood.

I come from a people who do not split poles,

who toss salt over their shoulders, and who constantly knock on wood.

My elder aunt is adamant that I knock on the table every time my turn of hand at cards is completed.

When speaking about the dead, my uncle makes sure to hit his fisted hand on any object

that looks grainy and some shade of brown.

If I say something along the lines of,

I've never broken a bone in my body

with visions of me falling off my bike, my family urges me to knock on wood and to stop testing fate.

One theory is that the practice of touching wood has its roots in the medieval belief that trees

contained spirits that positively intervened when summoned. Today's poem

continues this faith, that we can somehow protect ourselves by acting

out instinctive customs against bad news or fateful tragedy.

...