Stepping on a crack
Stepping on a crack is the most famous sidewalk taboo, and children in Cambridge, Massachusetts, once avoided cracks because they believed poison lay in them. The game says less about danger than about our love of making up rules.
What it may mean
Nobody teaches a child to avoid sidewalk cracks the way they teach shoelaces. Children pick up the game from each other, then add their own rules: only step on the squares, never touch a line, the dark patches are lava. In Cambridge, Massachusetts, children once avoided the cracks in the flagstones because they believed poison lay in them. Plenty of adults still shorten or lengthen a stride without thinking when a crack comes up. These invented rules turn a dull walk into a small challenge with stakes nobody else can see. People keep doing that all their lives: counting stairs, finishing a run at a round number, matching steps to music. A crack on the sidewalk shows how much you enjoy a rule you made up yourself.
Depending on how you saw it
Walking with a child who avoids every crack
A child hopping from square to square makes a short walk twice as long and three times as much fun. Hurrying them along ends the game. When did you last match your pace to someone else's game?
Twenty boards without a crack
An old charm promised company to anyone who could step on twenty boards in a row without touching a crack. Wooden boardwalks made the challenge easy to set. Which little personal challenge do you still set yourself on an ordinary errand?
Tripping on a broken slab
Old lore offered comfort for a stumble: if your foot caught in a broken walk, you would go far. Roots and frost lift slabs and leave edges that catch a shoe. Which stumble of yours turned out to lead somewhere useful?
Why it happens in nature
Concrete shrinks as it cures and swells and shrinks with heat and cold, so builders cut straight control joints every few feet to make the cracks form along neat lines. Random cracks appear where tree roots, frost or heavy loads push the slab. Avoiding the lines is easy because they come at a steady rhythm that matches a walking stride.
What folk beliefs say
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Children in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a 1903 collection says, thought it unlucky to step on the cracks in the flagstones, because they believed the cracks contained poison.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 1 (1903), vol. 1, p. 526. View the page
To reflect on
Which small rule have you set for yourself that turns an ordinary task into a game?