Bathroom Monologue: Knock on Wood

Knocking on wood is nice, but the savvy individual knocks more than once. One tap ought to provide a certain unit of luck, often demarcated by the politically incorrect term “rabbit’s toe.” But you need an entire rabbit’s foot of luck to get anything done. Normal people knock twice to assure the pine that they have knocked and not merely bumped into it with their hand, yet this equates only two rabbit’s toes – not a full foot by lupine standards. Savvy individuals will knock three or four times, since no one really knows how many toes the little fuzzy bastards have. One civilization developed a machine to knock wood for them, assuming perpetual luck units would be gathered. Unfortunately this is a lot like thinking your car is exercising for you, and the wood-knocking devices wound up the lucky ones. All life on the planet went extinct, and now the battery-powered tappers dominate the planet. One would have expected them to die out when the batteries ran dry, but somehow they’re all still going.