Admittedly, I have superstitious tendencies. I wouldn’t say I believe in bad luck, but I’m willing to hedge my bets some and not tempt fate.

I have a lucky jersey I wear on “game day” when my team is playing. I have a lucky tie and lucky hat and I tend to not take chances that I think are unnecessary, such as walking under a ladder or smashing a mirror, and I avoid black cats. So when Friday the 13th rolls around I am a little more cautious during that 24-hour period.

So I woke up this morning knowing this is considered the most unluckiest of days on the calendar and cautiously got out of bed without banging my toe on the bed post, took a shower without slipping and falling, got dressed and came down the stairs without tripping and drove to work very cautiously without getting in an accident.

I’m safe — or so I thought.

I just checked some of the top stories floating around out there on cyberspace and apparently there’s a lot more drifting around in outer space. Namely a bunch of junk and some of if it expected to crash through the atmosphere and hurdle toward Earth today.

Uh oh.

I didn’t plan on being smashed by space junk on Friday the 13th.

Fortunately, it appears the junk is expected to land somewhere in the Indian Ocean.

Whew.

But did you know that there is more than 500,000 pieces of space junk floating around out there? That’s right. Half-a-million pieces of junk just waiting to crash into earth. There’s more than 20,000 pieces of debris in outerspace  larger than a softball traveling at more than 17,500 mph orbiting the earth.

Are you kidding me? How is it that folks aren’t being blasted in the head constantly by this stuff?

I’m not superstitious, but for the rest of today, I’ll be keeping an eye to the sky in search of some piece of space junk targeted for impact in my general direction.

I guess I should have worn my lucky shirt today.

Rob Sigler is managing editor of the Oxford EAGLE. Contact him at rob.sigler@oxfordeagle.com.