Writing Prompt – Talismans and Lucky Charms

It’s possible I’m dead right now. Check the news. I’ll wait.

Did you see anything about a plane crash? One heading to Oregon from the Eastern Seaboard? If so, I might be on that plane, and therefore dead.

It would also mean that all the lucky charms and talismans I stuffed in my pockets before I left, did not work.

(You might have figured out that I have a fear of flying. I don’t know where it came from. I’ve flown to Europe on more than one occasion, have been up and down the East Coast and as far west as Colorado…and I enjoyed each of those trips. But somewhere along the line, my brain wrinkled.)

I’ve been advised to take a pill and have a drink.

Instead, although I’m not normally a superstitious person, I’m carrying with me:

1. Several rosaries.
    
2. A scapular.
    
3. A lucky sea bean.
    
4. An acorn.
    
5. A wad of Patron Saint, Miraculous and Bleeding Heart medals that I inherited from my grandmother.
    
6. Some medals of my own, purchased at the Vatican on Easter Sunday – which makes them holier, right?
    
7. A tiny, tiny statue of statue of Saint Christopher, inherited from another grandmother. It’s encased in brass, no larger than a bullet (and very easy to carry in my pocket).
    
8. I have also made a promise to donate money to a charity upon my return. Because according to Jewish wisdom, there is extra protection given to someone who is en route to perform such a mitzvah.

If it offers protection. I’m game. I just hope they can all work in harmony. I’d hate for one lucky charm to cancel out another.

Here’s Your Prompt:

• Write about your good luck charm.
   
• Take a character in one of your stories and give him a good luck charm. Think of something unusual for the charm or talisman. Write the back story for it: why does he carry this particular item?
   
• Write about:
   
  • a lucky shirt
  • a four-leafed clover or bamboo
  • lucky sigils, crosses, runes or rings
  • a lucky ‘piece’ (a penny)
  • a horseshoe – with the luck run out!
  • lucky runes
  • crickets, lady bugs, dragons, or scarabs
  • acorns
  • a rainbow

• Find a penny, pick it up
  and all day long, you’ll have good luck!
   
• Write about someone who throws a coin down a well, and gets his wish: but not exactly the way he wanted it to happen.
   
• “Luck of the Draw,” his tag read. She stared at him, and he stared back. Now how was she going to get him home?
   
• …Star had sent to them as its messenger. The bird was stuffed and preserved as a powerful talisman. They thought that an omission of this sacrifice would be followed… ~ From The Golden Bough, 1922. Chapter 3. Human Sacrifices for the Crops by Sir James George Frazer.
   
• Write a scene (or more) from the point of view of person who is very superstitious.
   
• Luck can change in an instant. Write a scene where a person’s luck changes by the end of it.
   
• His mother pleaded for him too, but it was not needed. He had enclosed in his letter the strongest talisman of all, a letter written by Elizabeth in the long ago when we were children together. ~ From The Making of an American, 1901. Chapter V. I go into Business, headlong by Jacob A. Riis.
   

Good luck!