I have this vexing mental concern I’d love to hear you all’s input on…

The color red is my favorite color, always has been. I like lots of other colors, but I’m always drawn most towards red. For many months I have been on the fence about ordering a couple Noodler’s colors. The two I would like to order are Antietam and Black Swan in English Roses. However, there’s a slight problem which prevents me from doing this.

Ordinarily I am not a superstitious person, but for some events I personally witnessed not once, but twice. Both of them involved the color red.

You see, I spent several years working in Asia, SE Asia in particular. The Chinese community in SE Asia (and Asia in general) is quite superstitious about a whole bunch of things (think Feng Shui, etc.). I could start listing off some of the superstitions I’ve seen and probably not complete the list until next week sometime. One in particular though captivated my attention.

One day I was sitting in a meeting and there was a sign-in sheet going around the table. I had worked with most of the people in the room for quite some time (years in this case). At the table were people of Indian, Malay, Thai, North African and Chinese descent. The sign-in sheet stopped in front of this one Malay colleague who spoke up and said he didn’t have a pen. One of his colleagues slid a red rollerball pen across the table (I suspect some Chinese members here just cringed). At the sight of the pen one of the senior engineers, and the chair of the meeting, spoke up and suggested he not sign the sign-in sheet in red pen. He did anyway, and the meeting went on.

I asked Engr. Liang after the meeting what he meant. “Very bad luck” he said; “never sign your name in red. It means ‘death'”. Rather ominous I thought. Less than two weeks later the gentleman who had signed his name was rushed to the hospital, critically ill, with a rare liver infection. I learned of this at Noon, and before I could get to the hospital after work he had passed away. He was a good friend.

About a month and a half later I was going through a big pile of paper organizing some things. I came across a field sketch which had a number of agreements reached in the field of the project I was on. Several people signed and dated the sketch. One of them was a fellow ex-pat like myself, an Australian fellow from Sydney. We too were close friends. The fact he’d signed the sketch in red pen sent a little chill down my spine. “Don’t be superstitious!” I told myself. A week later he was killed in a motorcycle accident up in Thailand (on his honeymoon no less)! An absolute tragedy of the highest order.

I’m sure you can imagine, regardless of how superstitious one might be the coincidence of these two events was pretty shocking. From that point forward I’ve never taken any chances. Call me superstitious if you want, but I’m never caught with only a red pen where I might have to sign my own name, or have someone else sign theirs, in red.

(note: apparently, so I’ve been told, this only applies to a name, not writing in general)

I guess I could just tell myself these two inks I’d like to get really aren’t red, but I’m not sure that changes anything. On the other hand, I could just not worry about it and chalk it up to some silly superstition. But, like I’ve told some friends “that event scared me…and I ain’t scared of nothin’!”

What say you?