Setting: A cozy apartment in Chicago. It’s raining outside. A dripping-wet Jake walks in holding an umbrella and immediately pops it open indoors to let it dry. His best friend Luis, who’s lounging on the couch with a bowl of popcorn, gasps in horror.
Luis:
(leaping up)
Jake! What the hell are you doing?! You opened an umbrella inside! Do you want to jinx us both?
Jake:
(chuckling)
Dude, it’s just water. I’m trying not to leave a puddle on your hardwood floors. Relax, the universe isn’t going to curse us for trying to stay dry.
Luis:
You don’t understand. Every time someone opens an umbrella indoors, something weird happens. Ask my cousin Gloria — she did that once at a birthday party, and two hours later, the cake caught fire. The cake, Jake!
Jake:
(laughs)
Okay, first of all, how does cake spontaneously combust? Was it filled with fireworks? Maybe Gloria should’ve been more worried about her baking skills than umbrellas.
Luis:
It was a store-bought cake! No fireworks. Just pure, cursed sponge and frosting. I’m telling you, the umbrella thing is real. It messes with the energy in a space. Ancient Egyptians believed it invited the wrath of sun gods by disrespecting their power indoors.
Jake:
And you think Ra, the sun god, is still lurking in modern apartments in Illinois waiting to smite us because I didn’t wait until I hit the porch? Come on, Luis.
Luis:
Laugh all you want, but superstitions stick around for a reason. People experience real consequences. It’s not always logical, but neither is luck. Some stuff is just… beyond science.
Jake:
I get that luck feels real. But think about it — how many people open umbrellas indoors every single day and nothing happens? You remember my aunt, right? OCD like crazy — she opens her umbrella indoors all the time to dry it in her hallway. She hasn’t had a single bad thing happen, unless you count that time her cat barfed on her pillow — but that cat’s a menace anyway.
Luis:
Well maybe your aunt’s got some good karma buffering the bad luck. I don’t know. I just don’t like tempting fate.
Jake:
Okay, how about this: what if I told you that this superstition started more as a safety issue? In Victorian times, those umbrellas were big, spring-loaded contraptions. Opening them indoors could easily knock over lamps, vases — people even lost eyes! So they started warning people it was “bad luck” as a way to avoid lawsuits and broken noses.
Luis:
(pauses)
Seriously?
Jake:
Yup. It’s like how people say don’t walk under ladders — not because ghosts will grab you from above, but because someone might drop a hammer on your head.
Luis:
Huh. That… kind of makes sense. But still — I feel better not doing it. Like, if avoiding one silly thing can keep the universe on my side, why not?
Jake:
Because we shouldn’t let fear run our lives, man. What if I said, “Don’t eat popcorn on Thursdays or your team will lose the game”? You’d laugh. But if I kept saying it every week and your team did lose, you’d start to wonder, right?
Luis:
Damn it, now I’m never eating popcorn on a Thursday again. Thanks a lot.
Jake:
(grins)
See? That’s how superstitions spread — people link unrelated events. But that doesn’t make them true. Correlation isn’t causation, my superstitious amigo.
Luis:
You and your scientific logic. Always raining on my magical thinking.
Jake:
(gestures to the wet umbrella)
Actually, I’m drying my magical thinking right now.
Luis:
(groans)
Fine. But if my car won’t start tomorrow, I’m blaming you and that cursed umbrella.
Jake:
Deal. And if it does start, you owe me a superstition-free movie night — with umbrellas open and black cats crossing the screen.
Luis:
Only if there’s popcorn. Just… not on a Thursday.
Jake:
(laughs)
Deal. But I’m bringing a ladder just to keep things interesting.
Science Vs Superstition 
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