Open your mind

Checking-up on Storm's vaca, and she reports that she done went to a sooth-sayer. You know, a seer, diviner, prophetess, clairvoyant, medium, (ok- that's pushing it a bit. Did you see her picture?? No? Check again. Gaze into those eyes and I'm butta', I tell ya!) mind reader, mitt reader, oracle. Ya got guts, Storm (that's sisu to you Finns oot dere in da UP.) No, check that. Cojones.

I mean, that's like letting someone rifle through your underwear drawer. There's just too much for them to find out. (I'm talking about mine, not yours. You know what I mean. I hope.) Not even most trusted friends have access there, let alone a master mind-bender.

I've had 3 brushes with Clare Voyant, and it was like The Three Bears: this one's too hot, this one's too cold, and this one's juuuuust right. Please, I beg you, allow me to put it in bruinilogical order for you.

Scene 1- Cut to 1992, young DINNKs (double income, no kids) being jetted to glitzy, glorious Merrilville, IN so Wifey can interview with large conglomerate. Jimmy was out of sorts on this trip, a fish out of water. First of all, I had to swallow my pride; this would make our life "unconventional" in the Ward and June Cleaver sense of things. Next thing hard to shake was that feeling that Mitchell McDeere had in The Firm when he started to pick up on how the firm does everything for you (and this was BEFORE the movie came out.) While Wifey interviewed and tested, they had a realtor drive me around to see some areas (Valpo was nice), and a feeling of dread came over me when I saw something: a gated community. Things started clicking in my mind about something I had heard from a coworker who hit the fleece markets in Northern Indiana quite a bit, something about a pretty heavy supremacist area nearby, complete with their own "force". The guard shack at the gate definitely gave you the creeps. After I got back to the hotel, I needed to veg- but didn't want to hang in the room (THEY might be watching!) SO- wandering the lobby I come across a lady who interprets your handwriting. I will just say that it was pretty frightening how quick she was. But I will admit to not having a game-face on like Storm did. I don't play Texas Hold-em, for a very good reason.


Scene 2- Same DINNKs are in Chicago for a baseball weekend with mucho amigos. Doing the pub crawl from Wrigley Field back to Lincoln Park, we start hitting the pubs on Halstead and wander into the Corner Pocket. As luck would have it, just before we got there there was a fortune teller working a folding table at the corner. The girls saw it, and you could tell the train-wreck was on. We weren't in the pub for 5 minutes and they were pacing like a Yorkie on a windowsill hearing the faucet running after drinking a bottled water. It was killing them, so off they went. 20 minutes later they're back. And they're not talking. 2 of them got the bad news that "they're not the one". Wifey was told of our reproductive future. 1-2-3 I'm Out!


Scene 3- We're in college, so we're not DINNKs yet. Campus Life has a funnier-than-shit comedian/hypnotist in to work his magic on a Thursday night (I think his name was Tom DeLuca. If so, props to Tom!) I'd been hypnotized before, and needed no convincing of its capabilities. It's extremely powerful. But to see what he could do to those poor unsuspecting folks, how he could make them think they're completely naked up on stage at the mere utterance of a single word, or that they've caught the biggest marlin ever and they've got to reel. it. in. with. all. their. might. Mmm-mm. Nope. I'll just do some mescaline if I want to have my mind outta my body like that.

So that's the hot, cold, and juuuust right of it. The bad and the ugly was back in high school after a good family friend died when I was in 10th grade. Some time later, I heard that one of his daughters had been to a card reader months before he died and Clare Voyant flipped a death card or some Yu-gi-oh super power card like that. The card stopped her cold, she had a vision that she could see her with her sisters looking down and crying, and it seemed that they were kneeling.

He died of a massive heart-attack on the dance floor at a daughter's wedding. The family has been nearly destroyed since that time: suicide, drunkicide, etc. I wonder, what else did she see? Did she tell her everything? Did she see that his own brother would steal everything from their firm and leave his sister-in-law a pauper, with two still in school? Or did she see death's grip in his own family's future and remain silent, perhaps with the crooked grin seen on so many gypsy's faces in bad movies through the years?

For certain, I will never know. I'm still sorting issues, folding them neatly, and tucking them away in my underwear drawer.