September 18, 2002

  • There are times, now and then, when I’m out strolling about that I catch myself avoiding stepping upon cracks in the sidewalk.  (For real: I just came back from such a lunchtime walk.)  I realize at such times that I have unconsciously relapsed into the childhood game of “Step on a Crack”, a seemingly simple game where someone taunts: “Step on a crack—and break your mother’s back.”  Of course, my friends and I as children, upon being challenged, all then took immediate scrupulous care to avoid all the cracks—at least for a while.  But superstitious taunts, like IP packets (internet packets), apparently have their own TTL—“time to live”, so when the taunt grew “old” for us (i.e., we got bored with the game after a few minutes), it seemingly “wore off” and we thereafter paid it no-nevermind.


    Actually, now that I think about it, this taunt may have been tantamount to an anti-superstition.  Not everyone breaks mirrors (for seven years bad luck)—or has the necessity of walking under a ladder—or is crossed along the way by a black cat.  But every kid would eventually step on a crack!  And guess what?  Only one in a hundred million would go home and find their mother’s back seemingly as a consequence (but we now understand as a coincidence) broken.  So stepping on cracks, as we all attempted to avoid but would all eventually succumb to, probably helped destroy our beliefs in the power of superstitions.


    However, what interests me most about this game is the fact that mothers ostensibly could be so easily victimized—if not in fact, at least in taunt.  Clearly might not this game in its origin be the product of the darker side of a haughtily patriarchal society?  Could you ever imagine this diversion running actively rampant under a matriarchy?  Hell no!  Though they’d probably have an alternative version such as “Step on a crack and you’re mother will give you a whack”.


    Or maybe the real energy of this superstition resided in the collective belief of oppressed mothers as an exploitable alibi of why their domestic work was so “back-breaking” : “Oh my, my little Johnny must be out there stepping on cracks…”


    Here’s some other interpretations:


    Do you remember the childhood phrase, "Step on a crack and break your mother's back?" This is an example of how small children achieve a sense of control when they are away from their mothers and fear abandonment.


    from psyber square


    Ill-fortune is said to be the result from stepping on a crack in the pavement. Present day society usually associates the superstition behind treading on cracks to the rhyme: "Step on a crack, break your mother's back" but the superstition actually goes back to the late 19th - early 20th Century and the racism that was prevalent in this period.
    The original rhyming verse is thought to be "Step on a crack and your mother will turn black." It was also common to think that walking on the lines in pavement would mean you would marry a negro and have a black baby. (Apparently this superstition only applied to Caucasians and because of the rampant prejudice against black people, was considered an activity to avoid.)


    from csicop

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