Answer #142 - I see a yacht in your future

I've seen two psychics in my life.

One by accident, because a friend introduced me to him in a bar. One on purpose because I was in college and all my friends said I should because she was amazing. In those days, I succombed to pressure much more easily. Which is not to say that some folks aren't actually psychic - and maybe 'psychic' ability is in fact part of the evolution of the human brain - I'm open to possibilities. And I've seen and heard some amazing stuff.. It's just that many folks who say they are maybe aren't.

Further, the succombing to pressure does explain why, in college, I learned to roll a quarter off my nose, bounce it off a table and into a glass of beer.

Anyway, the psychic in the bar asked if I'd been in some terrible auto accident.  He had a British accent, so was convincing. That's just the way it is with us Americans.  We succomb to the power of the British accent. It's true. If it's spoken with an authentic British accent, we believe it, and it really doesn't matter what's being said. That's why we believed
Tony Blair when he prattled on about the 'weapons of mass destruction' - and though I hold him personally responsible for every bad thing that's happened since*, I'm still not immune to it. The accent, I mean.

Anyway, when I said I hadn't been, he went on to tell me that I would.  The psychic. Be in a terrible auto accident, that is.

"Will I survive?"

"It would seem.  More or less."

He didn't elaborate, and couldn't be cajoled into revealing more information. And there's me, imagining the worst, as is my tendency.  Life in an iron lung, for example.

What an ass. Him, I mean.

With my penchant for drama, this of course led to years of me fearing the 'terrible auto accident' - and thus turned me into the world's worst back seat driver - what with seeing the spectre of death at every fork in the road... just hanging out there, on the side of the highways.. scythe in hand, black-hooded and looming, waving as I drove past... and then me kicking myself for being such a chump.  Damn it, like a hundred more IQ points and I'd never think on this crap...

The second one asked me if my brother was terminally ill.  When I answered, "I don't think so," she insisted that I insist that he see a doctor.  I remember broaching the subject with my brother, and I remember him laughing, and I remember me laughing nervously in response to his laughter, and I remember me remembering that she (the psychic) told me I should eat more yellow squash.

So, of course, to this day, every time I eat any kind of yellow squash, there she is, long black witchy hair and the sweet, viscous cigarette/incense mix lingering on the curtains and china red tablecloth.

It's conceivable - I still could be in a terrible auto accident.  Eventually, my brother, like all of us, will be terminally ill, and yes, we all should eat more yellow squash.  Just because.

But were they psychic?

And if so, then where's my yacht?  Because, damn it, she said I'd have one.


*No, I actually don't.