What a coincidence! v. What's a coincidence?

Coincidence, per a dictionary: "the occurrence of events that happen at the same time by accident but seem to have some connection."

There is record of a tribe of people who believed that a certain boulder in a glade in a forest was a nexus (my word, not theirs) of fertility. In other words, if a woman wanted to get pregnant, she had to sit on that rock, pantless. They connected that rock with pregnancy, not sex. Everybody did sex, but only women who sat on that rock got pregnant.

See? All it takes for silly beliefs to arise and prosper is for ignorance and coincidence to work their subjective magic.

Every single one of us has fallen prey/pray to this phenomenon at least six times in our lives. Here's one of my personal experiences: I heard someone say that if a person stepped on a sidewalk crack, his/her mother's back would break. This was first grade. It was the same year that I cannily traded three dimes for three nickels because I had figured out that since nickels were bigger, they were worth more. Anyway, walking to and from school that year, I NEVER stepped on a crack. And so my mother's back never broke. I never mentioned it to her, but I'm sure she would have been grateful.

Here's another one many of us burden ourselves with: as you face a double, queen, king or California king bed, I sleep on the left. Through three marrages, etc. (Whew, that etc. was quite an interesting two years!!) I have always slept on the left side. I just know that bad things would happen if I ever slept on the right side, or worse, got out of bed on the right side! Horrors!

We are currently thought to be the culmination of either Ghawd's plan or Nature's natural design, and yet we are so burdened with superstition and ignorance than it's a wonder someone out there isn't marketing fertility boulders. Or maybe I'm just not watching the right cable channels?