Back in the Game!

My favorite part of all social contact is the getting to know. I realized this today at the dog park when the lady next to me on the bench started in, “What is your name again? I think your friends with my daughter, Sarah.” It would certainly be a stretch to say that Sarah and I were friends. Indeed, until just now, I didn’t know Sarah’s name was, well, Sarah. I did notice the girl that’s usually attached to this yappy-barky dog. It’s hard not to notice the yappy-barky dog, what with all its yapping and barking. The girl that belonged to this outspoken pooch had a tattoo of a lizard on her calf. (Yes, I’ve taken to organizing girls in my head by their tattoos.) I remember her, but I’ve hardly spoken to her for 5 minutes in the 5 months we’ve shared afternoons at the dog park. I wouldn’t call that friendship. Some are more liberal with their words than I am, though. I’ve got nothing against the girl and if mom wants to think of us as friends, who am I to challenge mom’s authority? So, Sarah, who’s not present at the moment, is my new friend.

What else strikes me as odd about mom’s question is the ‘again.’ What’s your name again? I didn’t know Sarah’s name. Sarah didn’t know my name. Now Sarah’s mom wants to know my name again. How strange this all is. Still, just like that mom broke down the doors of stranger-hood by coyly suggesting that the three of us indeed had a history together. Indeed, had I not had the habit of remembering every spoken conversation I’ve ever had, I might place the blame on myself for having forgotten all the good times we shared, let alone the names of my dear friends. But, I know it’s mom that’s faulted. It’s mom that invented in the annals of her mind some past episode with me as the lead character that did not, in this reality at least, ever occur. But the again has yanked me into that very bizarre episode where Sarah, mom, and I are perhaps enjoying a leisurely spring picnic or maybe we’re playing badminton on the Outer Banks. Three peas in a pod. Cue the credits! The again has obliterated the cautiousness strangers express towards each other; we’re now at home with each other. Longtime friends, if just a little bad with names. (You, the reader, are now of the belief that mom misspoke. The crazy ole loon can’t keep faces straight or something. I wonder how you’ll feel at the end.)

I asked mom, “What do you do for work?” “I’m a psychic.”

Wow.

I’m floored.

A psychic?

A real life psychic?

Like a person that can tell the future? Levitate things? Read my mind? Uh oh.

“A psychic?!” I say, my eyes now as big as beach balls. I’ve never been one to mask my emotions. Good lord, I think to myself. I’ve never met one of those. I’m so ill-prepared for this situation. And there I was, mom, thinking I knew you! “My first instinct is to say something like, can you do something for me?” I say as I wave my arms back and forth like a magician on television. I’m looking at the rock some 15 feet away from us and I want her to make it fly. I’m seven years old again. I believe what I read. I believe that rabbits can be pulled out of hats. I believe. I believe. I believe. Wait, hold on, can psychics even do that? Who is it that levitates things? I’m SO ill-prepared for this conversation. I laugh off what I just said to make it seem like I wasn’t serious.

The way I feel right now, at this very moment, sitting on a bench next to some 50 year old lady that claims to be able to see the future, it’s best described as “Christmas.” I realize that Christmas isn’t exactly an emotion. It’s actually a day in December. But before me is a gift-wrapped box. I’m not sure what’s inside. I’m not sure what will be added to my possession in just a few minutes. I’m a slave to the mystery. I’m a coil of anticipation, bound up and ready to leap forth…. into what? I cannot say. This is how it is when I meet people. There are so many possibilities. The questions race to my mouth faster than they can be answered. I’m on. On.

I’d tell you what the psychic and I talked about, but that’s not what this entry is about. This entry is about the way it made me feel. It’s about the winter receding into spring. It’s about the days getting longer. She said to me, “My, you have a very inquisitive mind!” Yes! Precisely. And where had it been? And for how long was it gone? On the way home, I realized that I have been stuck in this rut of self-absorption lately. Maybe it’s from starting a new career, or the breakup, or trying to decide where to move, but I’ve been incredibly introspective lately. I’m most at home right in the middle of introspection and extroversion. Even personality tests will attest to this. But life lately has thrown me off kilter. Suddenly, I was violently jerked back into getting-to-know-you mode.

Interesting that it look a psychic to shake me awake, remind me how important social dialogue is to my mental well being. And I owe this psychological revolution all to her diction. Had she not chosen to use the word again, I may still be stuck in that rut. I suppose we’re to conclude that she knew what she was doing? Why didn’t she just ask me my name and have that be the end of it? I never would have asked her what she did. I never would have taken interest in her life. And the conversations I’ve shared since may not have unfolded in the same way. Was this all by design?

I remain skeptical. I’ll leave you with this. I don’t really believe in psychic ability. I haven’t really given it a great deal of thought, but my sense is that psychics like Miss Cleo take advantage of people more than they have a heightened sense of intuition. Still, I’ll say this, when the lady took off her sunglasses, her eyes didn’t look like normal people’s eyes. To be perfectly honest, the way she looked at me made me a slightly uncomfortable. I imagine she’ll give me more to write about at some point in the future… (And I further imagine that it will take the form of the absurd Conan O’brien skit ‘In the Year 2000.’)