At some point, possibly before the term “bucket list” became all the rage, my friends and I talked about never having been to a psychic. We decided on the spot to see one together. One of us was friends with a classmate whose mother did readings. She went by the name, Ms. Ann.
Now, I’ve never believed in this stuff. A hardcore skeptic, I thought it was just a fun and silly way to spend a little time over summer vacation during college. On the day we made an appointment to go as a group, I spoke by phone with a girl I was dating occasionally. She spent her summer working for a friend’s company called Haywires Singing Telegrams.
Her act was to show up dressed in early twentieth-century Salvation Army attire, complete with a hood and cloak, and beating a drum. That made it all the more dramatic when she pushed “play” on a boom box, stripped down to a very revealing belly dancing costume, and delivered her message with traditional Middle-Eastern folk music and handheld castanets.
She and I were to meet later that evening. At the time of my call, she was on her way to an appointment at O’Hare Airport.
I believe I was the last to have my fortune told, or future read, or however the protocol was described. A couple of minutes into the reading, Ms. Ann, without even making eye contact, said,
“Your girlfriend is stopping traffic at the airport.”
I was stunned. The comment was so specific. I hadn’t mentioned my phone call to my friends or to her. The rest of my reading was uneventful, but that day, my skepticism developed a crack in its veneer. I decided that all things might be possible, after all, and that Ms. Ann was the real deal
