Always after me lucky charms!

Senior Sally Hardin is no stranger to the quiet anxiety that precedes most auditions. She's been playing the tuba seriously throughout high school, most recently gracing the pit orchestra for the school's production of "Beauty and the Beast," while simultaneously balancing practice for the All-State competition earlier this March. But even if she's got the knack of appearing externally cool while standing in a crowded pit or showcasing skills for an audition board, Hardin has got to have one thing to really nail it: her little pink sock.

"I've had it forever," Hardin says of her tiny good luck charm. "I liked it. I thought it was cute, so I just started wearing it." While wearing the sock has become a superstitious tradition, Hardin cannot remember the origin of her perky pink friend, though she first adopted it around the same time she took up the tuba in middle school.

In an era when superstitions have given way to technological novelties like Peter Answers, dream-catchers and four leaf clovers have all but become relics of the past. But some Blazers still rely on special, "lucky" objects for that extra kick of good fortune.

When it comes to teenage idiosyncrasies, Bethesda psychologist Dr. Devon Charles King believes that people often seek out superstitious rituals or tokens as a means to cope with the every day stresses of life. "One way of managing or dealing with stress is creating the rules inherent in superstition," King says. "It's a way for people to exercise control over things they don't understand."

Freshman Rachel Leksane follows this thought to a tee: she holds on to one of her personal good luck charms, a stuffed cow from her favorite manga series "Fruit's Basket," because she finds it familiar and comforting. "It was my little sister's," Leksane explains, "But she didn't want it anymore, so I took it." On certain test days, Leksane carries her cow around in hopes of performing better.

Then there are those who like charms because of their good memory associations: Kitty Martin, a junior, bought her first good luck charm on a family trip to Arizona, where she adopted a special Native American glass-blown necklace as a trinket. She soon began wearing the gem constantly to ward off bad luck. "They made it right in front of us," she says, "I thought it was so cool." Although the clasp has since broken on one of her favorite pieces of jewelry, Martin still keeps the charm in a special little box all on its own in her room.

In a season when itty-bitty gold-mongering shoe cobblers are said to thieve and pinch those not wearing green, it's a little hard not to get caught up in some harmless superstition. Of her furry friend, Leksane thinks its magic lies in its constant reliability: "It's a good stress reliever," she says. Hardin's sock is special to her by the same logic. "I bring it to my musical auditions and it helps calm me down," she says. "I usually do better when I wear it." Unconventional? Maybe. But who can argue with results?