Lorraine Randolph, age 13, of Tunstall, for his question:

Is it really bad luck to break a mirror?

Some people seem to think that life is a game of chance and the things that happen to them are good luck or bad luck beyond their control  It is quite true that many of the things that happen to us are beyond our control  Good luck and bad luck pop out of the blue, but not very often  What’s more, Andy thinks it is a poor excuse for living to stand around hoping for strokes of good luck or dreading strokes of bad luck 

People who do this tend to waste a lot of tame looking for sighs and signals to warn them of good or bad luck  They tend to hand this information on to help the next generation of luck watchers  Some of these signs may prove to be true  For example, they say, it is bad luck to walk under a ladder  Indeed it is, if there happens to be a sloppy painter splashing down paint from the top step 

It is simply not sensible to walk under a ladder without checking to sae what is going on at the top  After all, the ladders are put against walls to help someone paint, repair the roof, or do some other construction work  Tools, bricks and paint have bean known to tumble down from such operations 

It is bad luck, they say, to open an umbrella indoors  The living room may be rather crowded with small objects and the opening umbrella may knock over a vase or a lamp  This may lead to a scolding, which is indeed bad luck,

 It is simply not sensible to open  an umbrella in the living room  It is quite likely to break some small object  These things are not a matter of luck  They are not the kind of happenstance which falls on you out of the blue„ They are merely matters of good sense  If bad luck follows, it is a result of bad judgement 

A lot of these sayings do not make any sense at all, Andy never could figure out why a black cat crossing his path should bring bad luck or good luck  one day this happened to him and he found a dime  Another day it happened and a rainstorm canceled out a picnic  The black cat, Andy is positive, had nothing to do with the dime or the rain 

Breaking a mirror can certainly lead to trouble, especially if you are not very careful about picking up the pieces.   Mirrors are made of glass, the fragments are hard to see and sharp as razors  When you refuse to be scared by a hint of bad luck, you will get a brush and dustpan and carefully sweep up all the fragments  This is the sensible thing to do and if you do it, no threatening stroke of bad luck is going to swoop down upon your head  Good sense is more useful than good luck, for you can use it to avoid bad luck