Knock On Wood

One of the most famous superstitions in history is when a person knocks on wood for good luck. An example of this would be if a person went to the dentist and upon completion of his dental exam the dentist tells the patient that he had no cavities.  Then the patient, as he walks out the door knocks on wood and says, "And I hope I have no cavities in the future."

​But can one use the knock on wood superstition too much to the point that it does not work? Think about it, if you were just to walk around all day looking for a piece of wood to knock, you would not be able to function in life as at every instance you could find a reason to knock on wood. Sadly, this is what some people do. 

In this story we will investigate a very curious case of a man named Lester Horny who worked at a lumber mill. Lester was a very superstitious man who was convinced that one's success in life was not based on hard work or will but on luck. Therefore he made the constant effort to surround himself with good luck by knocking on wood. He was so obsessed with it that he quit his career job as a lawyer because there was not enough wood around him. The breaking point at his law office came when they took out his oak desk and replaced it with a plastic one. He then had nowhere to knock and that's when he lost five court cases in a row. He told his law firm that he would be willing to purchase his own oak desk but they said no and told him that it was now against company policy to have anything wooden in the offices because the company had adopted a policy to save the trees. Lester continued to lose cases and claimed that he was fired but the company says he quit. And this was how Lester ended up at the lumber mill. 

At the lumber mill Lester was ensconced in wood and would knock on it all day and because of this his luck never ran out. But as time wore on the environmental pressures continued to increase and the lumbering industry was slowing down and then came to a halt and Lester was out of a job. Lester was last seen wandering off into the woods nearly three years ago.

Lester's family lost track of him as apparently he had either died or disappeared after the lumber mill closed down. Then one day Lester's parents received a phone call from a man that claimed he had seen him and had talked to him. The caller said that Lester was living in a remote forest and was running from tree to tree knocking on wood and when he asked him why he was doing so, Lester said that he needed continual good luck to prevent himself from being stepped on by the mythical giants that roamed the forest day and night.