To preserve happiness, shut mouth

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that if something good happens, you're not allowed to tell. If you have a hot date, keep mum until he's called for a second. If you're interviewing for a hot job, don't tell anyone until you've got the offer.* Or you'll jinx it. Right? Right.

Why is that? This puzzles me. Not that people believe it - but that it actually works. Why should the universe enforce this weirdly trivial rule? Because it does. It really does. Remember my watch that never works, but is now working? Remember that the watch that was working, but stopped as soon as I gloated about that fact? You'da thunk I'da learned my lesson. Nope. Last night I commented to Beloved Consort on how nice it was that my pretty watch was working, and how wonderfully reliably it was working, and how odd that was. (He singularly failed to appreciate the oddity of the unreliable watch working, just when the semi-reliable watch stopped. Never mind.) So of course this morning it had lost 10 minutes.

Okay, it's just 10 minutes, and since then it seems to be all right. But it has undermined the whole trust issue. I want to be able to trust my timepiece. Is that too much to ask?

[Sulk.]

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*I seem to remember that's the rule, anyway. Been so long since I looked for a new job. And absolutely aeons since I had a hot new boyfriend. O'course when I did, I completely failed to keep it a secret (not very good at that discretion thing), and he's still around. So I guess it's not the most reliable rule. All this unreliability. Good grief.