My mother brought me up to be superstitious e.g. "see a pin and pick it up, and all the day you'll have good luck". Whenever I saw a pin I would pick it up, show it to her, and she would stick it in my shirt saying "see a pin and pick it up, and all the day you'll have good luck. Wear it all day, Honey!" Often in school I would get stabbed by the "good luck" pin.
I think her one about it's being unlucky to leave shoes on furniture was just a ruse in order to scare us into keeping the house tidy. We lived on a lake and she told me a black stone with a white ring around it was a "lucky stone". I ended up with a lot of these as they were quite common. Mom did have an eye for four leaf clovers and she would iron them between waxed paper to seal them for posterity so that family could carry them around in their billfolds.
When I was ten, a neighbour's son was careening down our rural road and hit my best friend, my dog "Bosco". Two hours later when the vet informed us of Bosco's death everyone heard this guttural curse emanate from me that Bosco's murderer die exactly the same way. He did - he was run over one year later. Mother took me aside and warned me to be very careful about making such curses again. Ironically, 12 years later my mother died from a fall in the kitchen which split her head open (no, I hadn't cursed her). I flew to her home in Italy the next day to find in the kitchen a trail of her dried blood leading out into the living room where the police had dragged her body. Afterwards, I discovered hexagrams placed under the carpets because the more hexagrams are walked on the more powerful they become. They were to assist my mother in the black magic she was practising. With the information she had garnered from her extensive collection of literature on witchcraft, she had performed ceremonies during full moons with rings buried in the garden, etc. Mother should have followed her own advice about curses and meddling with the Fates - she may have lived longer.
The one tradition (superstition) which I still observe is the most bizarre. Mom would draw a rabbit and place it near my bed so that on the first of every month I would wake up and before uttering a word say "rabbit, rabbit, rabbit". I found out more on this strange superstition and discovered that if one does forget to say "rabbit" before speaking aloud on the first day of the month, it may be rectified by walking down a staircase backwards. There's more (believe it or not). If you say "rabbit" twelve times on the first of January, you needn't go through the monthly ordeal for the remainder of the year. So, for those who wish to have my mother's original reminder, I have provided a link to download a copy suitable for print and I hope it will bring you good luck throughout the years ahead. I wish I could give a copy to President-elect Obama as he needs good luck in 2009.