This week: The Meanings We Give Edited by: NaNoKit  
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Are black cats unlucky? How about numbers? If so, why?
In the run-up to Halloween, this week's Drama Newsletter is all about the meanings we attach to the world around us.
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Humans are odd creatures. I admit, I may be a prime example of that oddity. Some years ago, I played a game on Facebook called (fluff)Friends. In this game, you adopted a pet, looked after it, created art and played with and interacted with other people and their pets. It was a fun game, with a pleasant community of people. Unfortunately, it got sold to a big company and despite their promises to look after the game and its community, they messed it up and then closed it down without much warning. I was amongst those who were quite sad about the loss of the game. I was also sad to lose my virtual pet. It may have been an unfeeling bunch of pixels, but in my mind it was all lost and alone, wondering why he'd been abandoned...
I comfort myself that whilst I may have been weird to feel that way, I am far from the only person to form attachments to inanimate objects. A friend of mine has named her car and, sometimes, she talks to it. This is not uncommon. People name their boats. They name their instruments. They assign genders to these objects. For example, I am given to understand that boats are generally referred to as being of the female gender. People talk to their computers, muttering when it's slow, encouraging it when it's struggling with a chore. For some reason or other, we form bonds with things and treat them... perhaps not exactly as people, but certainly something beyond the object's purpose.
And that's not the only weird thing that people do. It's nearly Halloween, and amongst the imagery surrounding that day you'll find black cats. Black cats are, in some cultures at least, considered to be unlucky. As someone who's lived with black cats for 15+ years I can assure you that they're absolutely lovely, with excellent personalities, and they haven't brought me any bad luck. Unfortunately, to this day, if a black cat ends up in a shelter, they're less likely to get adopted than cats of other fur colours because that superstition persists. The second reason why they're less likely to be adopted is, in a sense, even worse - apparently people feel that they don't look good in selfies.
Knock on wood. Don't walk under ladders. Break a mirror and you'll have years of bad luck. Some numbers are lucky and some numbers are not. Which numbers these are vary between cultures. In some cultures 13's considered to be unlucky. In China the number 4 is seen as unlucky because it sounds similar to the word 'death'. Religious people may be wary of the triple-six number - I confess to have a mild case of that, hence my not typing it out. It makes little to no sense, though, does it? A number's just a number and, as said, different societies attach different meanings to numbers so there's not even a general agreement as to their luck/bad luck. Once more, we humans have attached a meaning to something beyond its purpose.
There are people who would, I suspect, severely dislike living in my house. First of all, it's located in 'witch country' - an area of England famous for its witches and, sadly, its witch trials. Above the doorway sits a carved owl. There are a couple of tawny owls nearby and at night you'll hear their hoots - a sound that's familiar to fans of horror movies. We also have a bat community nearby, and they're often spotted around my home. Whilst I have always had a love of bats, I confess to feeling slightly creeped out when I first moved to the countryside and heard the owls - as a city girl it wasn't something that I was used to and I did watch quite a bit of horror in my day. Nowadays I love hearing them. It's a comforting sound, and it's always good to know that 'my' owls are doing well.
There are many more examples of the ways in which people give meaning to the world around them. You can no doubt think of examples of your own. As writers, we can use these examples in our stories and our poems, to trigger feelings or emotions, or to challenge the sentiments surrounding them. Either which way, they're a handy trick (or treat) to have in our writer's toolbox.
Happy Halloween!  
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Drama: October 23, 2019 Issue [#9827]
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