It was the last day of school before Christmas break, and students were waiting for their buses to arrive when one girl mentioned how sad it was that they would never see each other again. “The world is going to end Friday!” she explained. Nothing can get fourteen-year-olds excited than superstition, and before long, the room was abuzz with talk about what Friday would hold for us. This particular young lady — I’ll call her Susan — was convinced that all the hype about the Mayan calendar was anything but hype.

“I’m serious!” she insisted. “We won’t be coming back to school.” Everyone discussed it a while, and all remained unchanged. After a few minutes, when the conversation had apparently died down, a skeptic, upset that the end of the world was once again the primary topic of conversation, got upset: “Man, don’t talk about it. You’ll jinx things!”

The day is almost over, and I guess we all feel fine.