Theos-Talk Archives (December 1996 Message tl00525)

----------
> From: liesel f. deutsch <liesel@dreamscape.com>
>
> Someone talked about the significance of the letter M. Well, let me tell
you
> what the letter M means to me. When I went to school, I used to put a
letter
> M on my friends' or my own forehead for good luck. This is how M means
good
> luck.
> There's a French word merde, which means, well, I'll say manure. When you
> walk around the streets of Paris, at least in the days when I walked
around
> there, there was a lot of dog manure on the narrow sidewalks. And I
suppose
> rather than get angry at stepping in it, people used to say that it was
good
> luck. So merde, which means "S---" means good luck.
>
I wasn't walking around Paris when I encountered dog manure.  When I was
going to grammar school, my mother alway wanted to walk through the alley
in Chicago, where is where most everyone walked their dog.  I thought it
was
a fun game to dodge the piles on the cement, but never thought of it as
good luck.

-Ann E. Bermingham