Chilly Air, Draft, and Other Superstitions

My people are a superstitious sort. It goes back to our ancestors, the Dacians, to their culture, and the influence that the Romans had upon them when they were colonized and brought into the vast Roman Empire fold. The Dacians had been a thorn in the Roman Empire's side. 

Trajan defeated Decebalus, the king of Dacia, in 105 A.D. and reduced the Dacian capital Sarmizegetusa to ruins in 106 A.D., absorbing some of Dacia into the Roman Empire.

The superstitions and strange beliefs they held have traveled across the centuries into our modern society, i.e., turning around when a black cat crosses one’s path, not walking under a ladder, sprinkling salt over the left shoulder to blind the bad spirits at the dinner table, spitting three times to ward off evil and a bad fate, avoiding the “evil eye” of a blue-eyed or green-eyed person by wearing a red ribbon, not returning home to retrieve a forgotten object once one left the house, not stepping on the threshold when entering a house, and not stepping between cracks of tiled floors, just to name a few.

The one superstition I never understood was the placing of a large and sharp knife under the mattress of an unbaptized child. The knife was to protect the newborn from evil spirits while they breathed the air on earth without the blessing of a baptism. I have no idea how far back this superstition went.

One deeply ingrained belief, still alive today, is that a person with wet hair and without socks exposed to chilly air and draft can become sick. We are not talking about hypothermia as the result of spending hours in the cold and windy elements, just a short exposure to draft and chilly air. And pushing the irrational boundaries even further, eating ice cream or drinking cold beverages with ice cubes would certainly cause a sore throat; my people believe that to be true.

It was not just the occasional nurse, teacher, engineer, doctor, or other professional who held such beliefs, it went all the way to the top of the hierarchy.

After the first President of the socialist republic returned from a Moscow visit with a sore throat, those surrounding him determined immediately that he must have gotten sick from a draft during his travels or from eating ice cream. Only later did his doctors establish that it was a rapidly developing form of throat cancer. The next president that followed him after his death was convinced, according to his Gen. Pacepa, that the Russians had him radiated for insubordination.

The next president took precautions to preserve his voice and throat and drank lots of chamomile tea, an herb containing traces of a mild antibiotic. His irrational fear went as far as to avoid and prevent all drafts and chilly air indoors, including fans and air conditioning. The modern conveniences were specifically banned and removed from all his residences and offices. He went as far as removing the central air conditioning in all public buildings.

On every foreign visit the dictator requested that all air conditioning systems be turned off for the duration of his stay. His employees had to seal off leaky and drafty windows and air vents everywhere that he happened to lodge, sleep, and hold meetings.

Drafts could come under doors, so the doors were plugged if they did not reach the floor. The president and his wife wore silk and cashmere socks, suede slippers, and hunting boots with warmers in them. No chance that the president and his demanding wife, their collective pampered feet, hands, and heads would ever get cold.

They wore the warmest clothes, gloves, finest astrakhan hats, smooth calfskin boots, finest cashmere in every winter garment, while the rest of the population froze in the concrete Soviet era apartments.

Both the dictator and his wife had a wardrobe of 365 suits, 365 dresses for her, 365 pairs of shoes each, 365 purses, hosiery, one for each day of the year. Once they were worn, every item of clothing was incinerated. They even traveled with their own sheets, towels, and food, to cover all bases.