The Psychic

If you’ve been around me long enough, you might have heard me tell the story about the psychic.  When it comes to my relationship with Gregg, it’s one of my favorite stories, simply because of how “out there” it is. 

When I was a junior in college, I lived with 11 other girls in an on-campus house.  One of the requirements for living in on-campus housing was that we had to do a certain number of activities as a group each school year.  Well, I don’t remember whether it was around mid-terms or finals, but for one of our activities, my friends and I decided it would be fun to bring in some food and hire a psychic to come to the house as a good break from studying.  How much crazier could it get than having 12 girls getting their fortunes read over pizza? 

When it was my turn, the psychic let me ask her one question.  I decided to ask her where she saw things going with the guy I had recently started seeing.  What she told me instead was that she saw me with a man who drove a green vehicle, that we would be married in two and a half years from that point, and that we would travel to many amazing locations. Yeah, OK, lady, whatever you say.  I’m gonna go get some pizza now.  That was fun.  She did some numerology thing, and was on to the next person.  Honestly, that was the last I thought of it.

Until about a year later, when I was cleaning out some papers from school and I found the slip of paper where I had written down what the psychic had predicted.  At that point, I had been engaged to Gregg for the last six months and we were set to get married in two years, and…oh, yeah…he drove a green truck.  We had a cruise to Alaska planned for when I graduated from college and to Hawaii for our honeymoon.  Holy cow, the psychic was right!  (How did that happen?  We just picked someone out of the phonebook for some laughs.)

So why this story, and why now?  Well, frankly, because if I could remember the name of the psychic we hired all those years ago, I would go back to my old college town and track that lady down.  Now, the other day, my bloggy friend Kelly over at Just Me made the point of not wanting to see into the future.  And to a great extent, I really agree with her.  Life is full of surprises, good and bad.  I think if Gregg and I knew in advance how much crap was going to hit us in the face right after we were married, we probably would have given up before we even got started.  And aren’t nice things 10 times nicer when they come as surprises?

Had Gregg and I had a biological child, we would have waited until the birth to find out the sex.  (See, I do like surprises.)  We often joke that when we receive our referral it’s going to be like Christmas morning – we left the sex open and the age fairly open, so we have no idea what to expect – and I’m just fine with that. 

So why the psychic?

I’d like to have a clue when to expect THE CALL.  (Were you going to say when I’m least expecting it?  Too late.  Every Thursday and Friday is fair game.  Saturdays through Wednesdays are less likely but still highly suspicious for a phone call.)  Why am I so persistent about having a specific time for this call, you might ask?  I think I’m just too overly organized with my time.  I’d like to know how much time we have to get certain projects done around the house so I can prioritize them.  If the call is not going to come until the end of the year, I’d actually start planning some long weekends away now that we have more vacation time to work with. 

Overly processed?  Sure.  High-strung and tightly-wound?  Absolutely.  I’ll go with any of that.  But if I were given the opportunity to see that psychic one more time, or to have a crystal ball put in my hands, I’d just ask one question:

“What month will we get this phone call?”