Look to the Future

At first I was sure I'd misheard him.

“A psychic?” I said uncertainly, “You mean like a fortune teller? A tarot card reader? The Amazing Kreskin? Have you completely lost your mind?”

I listened in stunned silence as he explained how it was something he'd always wanted to try, about the possibility that it might be genuine, about the documentary he'd watched telling how

an eye twitch could be meaningful, about how there were more things in heaven and earth.........

I listened and couldn't believe what I was hearing. We have parted ways about all manner of things and decisions over the years but this was novel. A psychic. Crystal balls and tea leaves.

Cross my palm with silver and I will tell you the future. It didn't seem possible that he would buy into it yet there it was. Would I walk in one day and find a ouija board set up on the coffee table? Had he finally taken that last step and swan dived right over the edge without a net?

A psychic. I thought of Uri Geller bending spoons, of John Edward and his best selling books, of Edgar Cayce, “The Sleeping Prophet” and of course, Jeane Dixon and her famous prediction of the Kennedy assassination. Nothing more than luck and fraud and playing the odds to easy, gullible targets. And sometimes getting rich in the process, I supposed.

“I'm not saying I believe or disbelieve,” he assures me, “but I'm curious and I do have an open mind.”

“Open your mind too much and your brains will fall out,” I tell him dryly.

But it's no use. Nothing I can say ever makes a dent when he's made up his mind and there's no point in arguing. A psychic. Bless his heart.