'O scartellato

'O scartellato. Fifty-seven is the figure of the hunchbacked man, and he deserves to be described honestly: in folk tradition touching him brought good luck, and from there he became an amulet — the one still sold in souvenir shops today. Behind the icon, though, there was always a person, and it’s worth remembering: the good-luck charm was born from a physical difference that, for whoever lived with it, was no joke at all. In the Smorfia the meaning is “crooked luck”: something that arrives from where it shouldn’t, good that springs from a hard condition. It’s the folk idea — ancient and a little consoling — that whoever got less in one place got more in another. In dreams, fifty-seven shows up when something turns around. A hard situation that proved useful, a flaw that became a strength, a difference that weighed on you at first and later set you apart. The images that lead here are the hunchback and the tree trunk: two crooked, powerful things, and a crooked trunk is one that bent without ever stopping growing. If fifty-seven came up in your dream, there was something out of true in it. We don’t promise any luck — nothing is promised here. We point out that crooked things sometimes hold up better than straight ones.