Right foot first
Stepping in with the right foot first is a small ritual for beginnings: families teach it for boarding planes, skaters use it on the ice, and in western Scotland it once rescued a badly started errand.
What it may mean
Right foot first goes wherever its owner goes. A woman in a Jewish family in the United States learned from her own mother to begin every new venture with the right foot, from starting school to the walk down the aisle and every flight, and she traced it to her grandmother stepping onto the ship that took her to America. A figure skater described lacing the right skate first and stepping onto the ice right foot down. In western Scotland, someone whose errand had started under a bad sign could go back inside, re-enter right foot first and set off again. A ship, a rink, a wedding aisle and an airplane door have little in common, yet the step is the same in each. However strange the place, it begins with one move you already know by heart.
Depending on how you saw it
Boarding a plane
An anxious flyer from New Jersey told her granddaughter that she always boards with her right foot, then kisses her hand and touches the floor of the plane. Rituals like this give nerves something to do. What small routine do you rely on before something nerve-racking?
Stepping onto the ice
A former competitive skater recalled always lacing her right skate first and stepping onto the ice right foot down, a habit she picked up from a teammate, as did several other girls on the team. Whose habit did you absorb by training or working next to them?
Leaving the house
Brand quotes an English writer, Gaule, who scoffed at people reading good or bad fortune into lifting the left leg over the threshold when first going out of doors. The habit outlasted the scoffing. Which of your small rituals would you keep even if someone laughed at it?
Why it happens in nature
Most people favor one foot, and it is usually the right: a 2020 review of 164 studies covering more than 145,000 people put left-footedness at about 12 percent. That makes the right the more practiced foot, so starting with it feels natural.
What folk beliefs say
West of Scotland
If the first passer-by on a business errand had flat feet, the business was expected to fail; but you could turn back, enter the house again with the right foot first, eat something, and then set off without misgiving.
Source: James Napier, Folk Lore: or, Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century (1879), p. 136. View the page
Jewish family (United States)
A woman in a Jewish family said her mother taught her to begin every new venture with the right foot, from starting school to walking down the aisle and boarding a plane; her grandmother had stepped onto the ship to America that way.
Source: Max Wolf (collector), Get on the plane with your right foot: travel superstition (USC Digital Folklore Archive) (2019), folklore.usc.edu. View the page
New Jersey (United States)
An 83-year-old woman of Ashkenazi Jewish descent, born in New York and living in Fort Lee, New Jersey, always gets on a plane with her right foot and touches the floor with a kissed hand when boarding and leaving.
Source: Eliza Poster (collector), Rituals for Nervous Flyers: Getting on the plane with your right foot and touching the ground after kissing your hand (USC Digital Folklore Archive) (2022), folklore.usc.edu. View the page
Figure skating (team custom)
A competitive skater always put on and laced her right skate before her left, and a teammate always stepped onto the ice right foot first, a habit others on the team copied; doing it the other way, she felt, risked a bad skate or hurting herself.
Source: kohanian (collector), Right Foot First – An Ice Skating Superstition and Ritual (USC Digital Folklore Archive) (2018), folklore.usc.edu. View the page
England
Gaule's Mag-astromancer counted it a vain observation to read good or bad fortune from lifting the left leg over the threshold when first going out of doors.
Source: John Brand; Henry Ellis (ed.), Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great Britain, vol. 3 (1849), vol. 3, p. 205. View the page
To reflect on
What do you do the same way every time you start somewhere new?