I would like to share with you some of the childhood superstitions that were prevalent in the neck of the woods I grew up in.

I would like to share with you some of the childhood superstitions that were prevalent in the neck of the woods I grew up in.

There were quite a few of these, but one was particularly weird and stupid, and we believed it 100percent.

We boys believed that if you wanted to score with a girl, you had to follow her around until she felt the need to take a wee.

As soon as she had weed, you were to go to the exact spot and urinate on top of her wee. After that, you were to find the feather of a bird or a chicken and stick it in your hair. In no time, the girl would come begging you for love.

When some of us grew up and started questioning things, we were accused of being brainwashed and turning our backs on "our" culture.

I was taken aback when, decades later, I found myself within hearing shot of a conversation between two nattily dressed fellows in their mid-20s.

The one was bragging about how he drove a car through a police roadblock after he had drunk a bottle of brandy and a couple of beers.

He took out a tiny piece of a stick from his pocket and proudly showed it off to his mate. The stick, he said, had stupefied the cops and made it possible for him to pass through.

He then went on to pour praise on the woman who had "worked" him in Winterveldt.

He shamelessly bragged that he had referred a group of men who wanted to "pull a job" to the woman and they had never been arrested in spite of committing a string of crimes.

Then he dropped the clanger: "That woman knows culture ."

I recalled a relative who put too much trust in this sort of "culture". He loaded his car full of dagga and headed straight for a police roadblock in spite of several cars flicking their lights to warn him.

Someone had told him to chew on some stick and the police would fall asleep as he drove merrily past them.

They did not, and he duly got 13 years in the slammer.

A woman I know was so worried about burglaries in her neighbourhood she went to see a "person".

The "person" gave her a potion of black shoe polish and instructed her to smear a little on all the items she wanted to "protect". He told her that if a thief broke into her house and touched any of the smeared items, he would be stuck to them, a la superglue.

And the "worked" polish was "cheap" at R300 - my foot!

I am breaking ranks. I am not wearing any feathers in my hair, and all the shoe polish I have goes straight to my shoes.

It is not my "culture" to be stupid.