strange luck

This kid has always been precocious. He finished his test in a flash and then he started doodling, not daydreaming. The result is this tourist (drawn in the white space of the test and then submitted to me), with his prominent chin, his bulging backpack, his fanciful hat. Intrepid, ready to go… into the mouth of the wolf.

I researched the phrase (I knew who to ask) and I asked the kid later if he knows Italian. No, he said modestly, just a few words. But he really liked this phrase (“In bocca al lupo”) because, as he explained, it reminds him of the superstition in Greece that it’s bad luck to tell a fisherman to “have a good fishing.” For good luck, he said, it’s better to wish the opposite. It’s counterintuitive, the same way no sane person would ever wish you to go into the mouth of a wolf if he really wanted something good to happen to you.

The kid’s right, I thought, and I told him how we say “break a leg” for the same reason, which he really liked but hardly believed. I also told him that the appropriate response to the thing about the wolf -- which I have on good authority -- is “Crepi il lupo.”

“Let the wolf die,” they say, the ones who are brave enough to answer.