Opening an umbrella indoors brings bad luck

[Scene: A cozy apartment in Lyon. Lucie is tidying up the living room. Julien enters, dripping wet from the rain outside, holding a large, soaked umbrella.]

Julien: (shaking off his coat) Pfff, what a downpour! Mind if I open this to let it dry?

Lucie: (wide-eyed, rushing over) Non, non, non, Julien! Don’t you dare open that umbrella inside! Do you want to curse us both?

Julien: (grinning) Oh come on, Lucie. It’s just an umbrella. It’s not a magic wand.

Lucie: I’m serious! Everyone knows opening an umbrella indoors brings bad luck. My grandmother told me, and her grandmother before her. Why risk it?

Julien: (laughing) You realize that’s just an old superstition, right? There’s no scientific basis for it. It’s probably just something people made up ages ago when indoor umbrellas were as big as tents.

Lucie: Pff! Scientific or not, I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Last month, remember when Sophie opened her umbrella in her hallway? The next day, she twisted her ankle on the stairs.

Julien: Lucie, Sophie twists her ankle at least once a month. If she sneezed in the hallway, she’d probably fall over. That’s just coincidence, not cosmic punishment.

Lucie: (crossing her arms) Easy for you to say. You’re the rational one. But I feel it, Julien. You weren’t there last summer when I accidentally popped my mini umbrella open inside. That same evening, I dropped my phone in the canal.

Julien: Okay, fair point. But tell me: did you also walk near the canal while texting?

Lucie: (hesitating) …Well, maybe. But that’s not the point!

Julien: (smiling) Exactly, it is the point. You’re connecting things that just happen to occur close together. That’s called confirmation bias. We notice the times something goes wrong after the superstition, but we ignore the dozens of times nothing happens.

Lucie: (half-laughing) You sound like my physics professor.

Julien: And you sound like my grandmother. She used to throw salt over her shoulder every time she spilled it — once she nearly blinded me!

Lucie: Well, salt is powerful! Maybe it’s you who’s been lucky so far.

Julien: (playfully) I’ll take my chances. Look, why don’t we do an experiment? I’ll open the umbrella now, and we’ll see if anything happens.

Lucie: (gasps, half-joking) Are you mad? What if the ceiling collapses? What if the cat runs away?

Julien: (laughing) Lucie, the ceiling is solid concrete, and you don’t even have a cat.

Lucie: Still! Please — just… wait until you’re outside.

Julien: (smiling softly) Okay, okay. For your peace of mind, I’ll wait. But tell you what — if we’re going to avoid bad luck, maybe you should also knock on wood.

Lucie: (relieved) I already did. Twice. See? That’s why nothing bad has happened yet!

Julien: (laughing) You’re impossible. You know, I admire how committed you are. But maybe one day, we should test these superstitions properly. Like, keep a journal. Umbrellas, black cats, broken mirrors — and count how often anything actually goes wrong.

Lucie: Hmm. That’s… surprisingly reasonable for you. Maybe we can even write a paper: “Superstitions in Modern Lyon: A Statistical Study.”

Julien: (grinning) Exactly! And then we can present it at the Café de la Place — over coffee and croissants.

Lucie: (laughing) Deal. But for now, that umbrella stays closed.

Julien: (holding up his hands in surrender) As you wish, Madame la Sorcière.

Lucie: (smirking) Careful, Julien. I know a few other spells too.

[They both burst out laughing as Julien places the umbrella gently by the door.]