Don't Bring the Evil

At the beginning of this year, I declared, with all the confidence in the world, that this was "The Year of Lauren".

Boy, was I wrong.

Have I had a rough year so far because I said it out loud?  Am I the only one who believes this can happen?  I was talking to a friend yesterday at an end-of-school block party I attended for a half an hour (YAY!  My first outing since being sick!!!) that I think I brought this on because I said it out loud.  She said that sometimes she just thinks things and BOOM - same result.  Like with the puke bug.  You make it to the end of puke bug season and your kids have been spared.  You think "Whew!  Crisis averted!  We made it through without the kids hurling all over the place!"  The next day your house is like a scene from The Exorcist.

There is a name for this phenomenon:  "Bringing the Evil".

My friend Jennie's husband taught that to me.

If I would say something negative he'd say, in his Colombian accent, "Oh, Lauren, don't bring the evil."

Is it true?  Does saying negative things put negative energy out there and make them come true?

I never would have thought so before but let's face facts and look at the year I've had so far.

More importantly, if you have already "brought the evil" by saying something so stupidly like, oh, gee, I don't know, "this is the year of Lauren", can you counteract it later by saying, repeatedly, "this is so NOT the year of Lauren!  This is the year of someone else totally!!!"  Is there some sort of tribal dance involved?  Hopefully it doesn't include wearing clogs because those death shoes are the reasons for my two previous trip-and-wipe-out debacles. 

In any case, learn from my fiasco of a declaration and don't bring the evil.  It's good for the medical industry but REALLY bad for you!  Trust.