Friday the 13th was kind of a family holiday when I was growing up. Dad would pick me up early from school and we'd drive to the Exploratorium. There's at least one F13 every year. Sometimes two. The year I was born, there were three, including my birthday.
Any month that starts on a Sunday has one. Yet there's no superstition around Sunday the First. "Why Friday the 13th and not Sunday the First when they're perfectly coincident?" That was our bottomless topic, our zen koan, on those F13 drives. We rubbed away at superstition and other forms of self-deception until we got to the museum and parked the car, when he would turn to me and repeat what was practically our family motto: Just see things the way they are and there will be nothing to be afraid of.
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