When Science Is Fiction

["Let Inga Tell You," La Jolla Light, published February 20, 2014] © 2014 

Both my husband and I enjoy reading science fiction although Olof’s preferred focus is outer space while mine involves health and beauty tips from women’s magazines which are especially bountiful this time of year.  I love this stuff.  The sheer creativity!  The total illogic!  The charming lunacy! And above all, the exclamation points!  All of the advice in these magazines is, of course, attributed vaguely to “science,” research,” or “experts.”  After culling dozens of “tips” from the January glossies, here are some of my favorites:

Bring the beach home.  Ocean air is pumped with negative ions which may amp up blood oxygenation leaving you calmer and happier.  Create instant ocean air by investing in an ionic purifier and running it for 90 minutes before you wake up.  As someone who has lived 262 steps from the Pacific Ocean for decades, I can only imagine what a crabby nut job I’d be if I hadn’t been sucking up ions all this time.  In fact, why aren’t all La Jollans, cocooned in ionic bliss as we are, deliriously happy?  Are those scheming pinnipeds and crafty cormorants siphoning it all off before it gets to us?  With every negative ion in me, I believe this needs to be investigated.

Exercise tip:  Making photocopies at work?  Do squats in front of the machine.  I am so trying to imagine this at my former workplace which was 90% male and where the photocopier was in the main hallway.  I’m not sure but I think H.R. had a specific policy against flashing the co-workers.

We recommend Sephora’s compact with 16 eye shadows made with antioxidant-packed cocoa.  So, are you supposed to eat them?

Write yourself a peppy note.  Nurture your inner optimist by scribbling a sentence or two about your favorite moment (or hour) of the week on a kitchen chalkboard, e.g “Girls night out + doubled over with laughter + lobster mac n’ cheese = a memorable dinner.  Must do it again soon!”  OK, so how are the kids going to feel when they pass by the chalk board where Mom has written, “Did Dad in the laundry room on top of the washer during spin cycle!  Gave each other massages with fabric softener!  MUCH better than Viagra!”

Eat garbanzo beans to fight gray hair.  These beans, also known as chickpeas, provide tons of protein along with the trace mineral manganese.  It’s known to prevent changing pigmentation, a.k.a. gray hair!  So how many truckloads would you have to eat per day to fire your colorist?  Maybe stop by CVS and pick up some manganese instead?

Eat cilantro to prevent hair loss:  It works as a purifying agent to rid the body of toxic metals which can stop nutrients from getting to your scalp, resulting in hair loss.  OK, so why isn’t every guy in America downing cilantro shakes?

Eat lentils for hair growth.  They’re an ideal source of iron, which is so important for full, lustrous locks!  This is especially key if you have thin hair!  Hmm, maybe that should be a cilantro-lentil shake.

A good excuse to eat chocolate:  People who do so have less belly fat.  [Inga begs to differ.]  Researchers think antioxidant-rich dark chocolate may curb cortisol, a hormone that triggers abs flab. Snack on two squares a day.  OK.  How big are the squares?

Train your fat.  Workouts don’t just help you ditch extra weight – they can also teach your fat to behave better.  …Studies suggest that 12 weeks of vigorous aerobic exercise can make a type of white fat – the kind under your skin that you can pinch – act more like healthier brown fat.  The difference?  Brown fat doesn’t just sit still:  It burns energy to produce heat, which results in better blood sugar control and a healthier body composition.  I predict the next diet craze will be “What Color Is My Fat?”  You read it here.

But I’m not an unreasonable person.  I’m willing to cut “science” and “research” and “experts” a lot of slack if they happen to conclude something I want to hear.  The Dec-Jan AARP Magazine, for example, reported that drinking two cups of hot cocoa a day for 30 days significantly improved (yes, they did say significantly) memory in older adults.  Cocoa “boosted blood flow to the brain, particularly in those whose flow was impaired.”  I would definitely put myself in the impaired flow category so do I get to drink three?  And if I wanted to make a late bid for Mensa, ten?  It didn’t say what this did to the waistline of the memory impaired, but what’s the point of being svelte if you’re senile?

So my plan for 2014 is to sit in my negative-ion-rich front yard chugging cocoa, eating eye shadow, and penning peppy notes.  All, of course, in the name of science.

 

A Grim Fairy Tale

[Let Inga Tell You, La Jolla Light, published February 13, 2014] © 2014 

I was recently reading a fairy tale to my tiny grandchildren:

Once upon a time, sweeties, in a land closer than you think, there lived magic flying machines called commercial airplanes who made it their business to take the people from one end of the kingdom to the other so they could see new places, or visit their family, or do work.  The commercial airline people loved their jobs, and wanted to make all the people who flew with them happy. 

If your airplane left late, the airline people felt so bad about it that they insisted on serving free champagne for the entire flight.  If your flight was late or cancelled, you could run over to a different company of airline people and they were deliriously happy to take your ticket.  No change fees, no hassle, and plenty of seats.   In fact, you could often have an empty seat next to you.  Yes, darlings, really. 

But then a great big ogre called deregulation lumbered into the land.  At first the kingdom’s inhabitants didn’t realize it was an ogre because it was wearing sheep’s clothing.  OK, maybe grandma is mixing metaphors here.   But the ogre was offering sheep, er, cheap seats.  Who could argue with that?  The kingdom dwellers thought it would be just the same as before, only cheaper.  They totally forgot the old adage, there is no free lunch.  They couldn’t have fathomed how literally true that would be. 

When prices were set before the big ogre came, the way the airline people could compete was by providing service, like fluffy pillows, full meals, and actually being really nice to the passengers.  But now that the prices were not set, the airline people competed only by fares.  When fuel costs went up, the airline people flew fewer and fewer flights with teenier and teenier seats and less and less legroom.  The 6’3” business flier kingdom dwellers, like your grandpa Olof, suddenly found themselves sitting with their knees around their necks.  No, you’re absolutely right; it isn’t very comfy.  The kingdom dwellers were astonished to find that those fluffy pillows were now inflatables and cost $8, a “sandwich” consisting of two thick slices of stale bread and a thin sliver of turkey cost $10, and the airline people, who used to be so nice, had been replaced by graduates of the Evil Troll Travel School. They thought nothing of leaving the kingdom dwellers sitting on the tarmac for nine hours without food, water, or working bathrooms.  This became known as the Prisoner of War Model of airline travel.

Even though there were far fewer airplanes flying, the airline people began cancelling lots of flights, often citing “weather.”  Global warming aside, there suddenly appeared to be a lot more weather than there used to be.  Your grandpa Olof got Marriott Gold status on Houston alone.  But ever since the ogre arrived, all the airplanes were full so that if your airplane got cancelled due to “weather,” or its imaginary twin, “mechanical problems,” there were no seats for three days unless you camped at the airline gate with your bags and did something called “standby.”  And good luck with that.

Of course, it would make sense to go non-stop so you wouldn’t have to spend three days in Houston but the airline people also implemented the “hub and spoke” model not coincidentally styled after a torture device popular in the Middle Ages.  

But the airline people did do one nice thing:  they prohibited smoking on airplanes, replacing it with the constant ping of iPad games.  Sort of like water dripping from a faucet except you can’t put a bucket under it.  And even worse, the evil troll airline people, feeling that they were not punishing  the kingdom dwellers enough, are considering allowing cell phone use on airplanes.  Even the sky marshall folks will not be able to keep up with the on-board homicides if they do, as kingdom dwellers, forced to listen to bored passengers’ banal droning for six straight hours, will finally snap and beat them to death with a tray table that was not in its full upright and locked position.  The TSA people will respond by removing tray tables from airplanes on the grounds that they could be used for terrorist purposes. 

The experience has become so miserable - and ironically, not all that cheap - that lots of kingdom dwellers don’t fly anymore except under something called duress.  Some of them are kingdom dwellers who remember when the airplane trip – yes, in coach! - was part of the fun of getting there, and where their now-mandatorially unlocked baggage wasn’t free shopping for baggage handlers, peanuts weren’t considered a meal, and water wasn’t a deadly weapon.  I know, sweeties, it’s hard to imagine.

My little granddaughter shuddered.  “Didn’t mommy tell you not to read us scary stories right before bed?”
 

**There's More Cookin' Than The Food

["Let Inga Tell You," La Jolla Light, published Feb. 6, 2014] © 2014 

My husband is having an emotional affair.  There, I’ve said it. 

Actually, if we’re being perfectly honest, it’s THREE emotional affairs and they’re all with cooking show honeys. I will refer to them as the Southern Sweetie, the Pioneer Person, and the Italian Temptress.   

It all started when Olof had minor surgery in 2012 that went really wrong. For a month, he lay in bed sipping his liquid diet and incongruously watching the Food Channel.  I guess it was eating by proxy. 

You’d think that would all have changed once he could eat actual food again.  But I know for a fact he’s still cruising cooking shows. Other people try to sneak a look at someone’s cellphone or email but I’m trying to get a peek at Olof’s DVR.  Which I would if I could figure out how to use it.

Of the three, the one that really worries me is the Southern Sweetie.  After walking in on the show some twenty times, I was dismayed to learn that the total number of episodes in the series had been…six.  There’s not a whole lot of deleting going on here, a classic sign of food porn addiction.  But I soon discovered that the problem wasn’t a fixation on the food.

Inga: “I didn’t realize you liked Southern cooking.”

Olof (transfixed to the screen):  “Is she cooking?”

No, Olof is completely infatuated with this young hottie’s 100-watt smile, her big blue eyes, her blond hair, and her southern accent that is thicker than the maple syrup she uses in her pumpkin scones. 

Every time she says “mah” (my), Olof falls deeper under her spell.  When she starts creatin’ a casserole, or “buildin’ mah bourbon pecahn pah,” Olof’s eyes go completely out of focus.  When she looks right into the camera, flashes that killer smile, and says (hopefully of the pah) “it’s super moist,” Olof has gone to another dimension.

The premise of the six shows is that in each episode, she’s teaching some clueless codger who has never even boiled water how to make a “romanic” meal for some lady love.  She is all encouragement as she coos at the codger with her drop-dead smile, “You could be a little more vig-rus with yer whiskin’.”  Olof would love to be a little more vig-rus with HIS whiskin’, believe me. 

It’s total culinary seduction.  No guy fails with her.  Cook “cun-try haym n’ pataytas” with her and everything will be unicorns and rainbows.  It will be like the first time you had sex.  Only better.  The girl will be happy too. 

She may have her blond hair in a demure pony tail at the nape of her neck but I’m sure Olof is fantasizing that the second that camera is off, the pony tail comes out, the blond hair cascades down the back, and she and the codger are locked in a hot embrace over the curried cauliflower florets.  If this show returns, I guarantee you Olof will be first in line for the codger casting call. 

As for the Pioneer Person, I’m sorry to say that as attractive and appealing as we both find her, what Olof is really lusting after is the cheddar.  I swear she must have a skip loader backing up to her house every Monday with 500-pound palettes of cheese and butter, i.e. all the stuff our primary care doctor, Dr. No, won’t let us have.  I get that she is feeding ranch hands in addition to her own family but a typical recipe starts with a roux of flour and six sticks of butter, followed by whole milk or cream, and a couple buckets of shredded cheddar all melted into a decadently gooey sauce that is poured over a vat of pasta and served alongside individual two-pound steaks.  Given that this is a cattle ranch, you kind of suspect that you saw the steak in a different form in a previous scene. 

As for the Italian Temptress, even I agree she is drop-dead gorgeous and has a radiant smile.  (Olof is a sucker for smiles.)  She’s also suspiciously thin. This isn’t the saturated fat fest of the Pioneer Person but it isn’t exactly diet food either.  I’m guessing that off-camera, she spends seven hours a day on a Stairmaster interspersed with kale cleanses.  It’s the only explanation.   Fortunately for me, she doesn’t have time for Olof with all that Stairmastering.  Besides, she’s got a husband who may or may not be Italian.  You don’t mess with those guys unless you want to end up as an ingredient in a tray of Party Perfect Lasagna. 

I just want to make clear to all three of them, especially the Southern Fried Vixen:  you can’t have my codger!  And as for Olof, I’d like to point out that I have a nice smile too.  Olof?  Olof?
 

Let Old Acquaintance Be Forgot

["Let Inga Tell You," La Jolla Light, published January 23, 2014] © 2014 

When I was visiting my son at his college fraternity house a few years back, we were looking at the yearly group photos of members from previous decades on the wall, and my son was expressing disbelief that anyone could have thought those hair styles, glasses, and clothes could possibly be flattering.  I said, “In another thirty years, some other guy is going to be standing in this spot saying the same thing about you.”  He looked positively stricken.

I have the same feeling when I’m watching Home and Garden TV shows about remodeling or finding one’s first house.  I love watching the look of horror that overcomes prospective home buyers’ faces as they walk in and exclaim in dismay, “It’s so eighties!” adding, “ALL of this has to go!” 

Sorry, prospective home buyers, but I remember positively lusting after the latest model homes featuring all-the-rage shag carpet, avocado or harvest gold appliances (instead of boring white), mirrored accent walls, wrought iron railings, large-pattern wallpaper, and the ultimate accoutrement, the sunken living room. 

I can therefore guarantee that in another couple decades, prospective home buyers on HGTV’s House Hunters will walk into homes and announce, “These granite counter tops, stainless steel appliances, and trey ceilings have got to go.”  Their realtor will point out that painting over the red accent wall is an easy fix and that a structural engineer can be consulted as to how to get rid of that open concept layout that allowed absolutely no privacy, and add some walls for some more defined space.  He will assure them that those stainless steel appliances that show every freaking fingerprint can be replaced with white ones, and those wine-glass-breaking granite countertops can be reconfigured in some eco-friendly version of Formica. 

It’s amazing how rabidly we can turn on styles that we once so adored.  Or how good we are at euphemizing into current desirability old styles we can’t get rid of.  I can’t help but notice that the “mid-century bungalow” the HGTV realtor is shilling is actually a 50’s tract house with a lot of wood paneling. 

When my former husband and I bought our 1947 home in 1973, some rooms still sported the “in” paint colors of the 1950’s:  Pepto Bismol Pink and Penal Institution Green.  Every house in my neighborhood originally had them.  The previous owners of our home had upgraded it with big-flowered wallpaper in the dining room and wall-to-wall green shag carpet over the hardwood floors throughout the house.  We might still have that carpet except for the fact that on January 7, 1981, the city’s failure to maintain sewer trunk lines after the passage of Proposition 13 caused, through no fault of ours, a main line block that re-routing the entire neighborhood’s sewage through our house for two hours before city emergency crews could shut it off.  Horror movies have nothing on this scenario.  It was 7 a.m., my then-husband, who was never home when I needed him, was off playing tennis when there was a sudden earthquake-type trembling.  Seconds later, geysers of black water spewed out of every drain in the house – toilets, bathtubs, sinks, showers.  Ultimately, I concluded that this was God’s way of saying, “Sorry for the overkill, Inga.  But that green shag was so last decade.” 

Clothing styles, of course, are as fickle as decorating  tastes.  I can’t help notice that some of those flower-power neon colors and even bell bottoms are back in style, and I could kick myself for not having saved my 1970s wardrobe for quick sale on eBay.  I’ve also watched the wedding dress show “Something Borrowed, Something New” where brides have to decide (obviously under extreme duress from Mom) whether to wear their mother’s high-necked poofy-shouldered 80’s lace wedding dress or pick out one they actually like.  I remember when those 80’s dresses graced the cover of every bridal magazine, a clear repudiation of those heavy satin numbers of a generation before.  In thirty years, I can see glum-faced brides on this show standing in front of the mirror in Mom’s strapless fit-and-flair Vera Wang dourly muttering, “Geesh, these dresses were ALL THE SAME.  Didn’t people in the 2010’s have any imagination?”

So accent walls and kitchen islands, be forewarned.  Your days are numbered.  Before you know it, you’re going to be the pariahs of the real estate world.  Real estate agents will be apologizing for you, assuring prospective home buyers that you can be easily exorcised.  And while I probably won’t be around to see it, I absolutely predict a Vera Wang clearance section at the 2040 Junior League Rummage Sale:  buy one, get one free.   So cruel, but so life.

Below:  My older son practiced his newly-acquired sitting up skills

on the ex-green shag carpet

 

Below:  Big patterned wallpaper was a popular upgrade in the 1970s.

Please also note macramé plant hanger.



*Reclaiming The Front Yard

["Let Inga Tell You," La Jolla Light, published January 16, 2014] © 2014 

I’ve lived in my house for decades but 2013 was the year we reclaimed the front yard. 

 

Over the years, the front yard had really been the kids’ domain.  We had big trees with rope bridges going between them, tree forts, tents, and plenty of flat play space.  Adults went out there at their own risk.

 

As they are wont to do, things changed.  Two of the biggest tree fort trees died.  The kids grew up, went away to college, and established lives and families out of town.  Since the grass was actually now going to have a fighting chance, we re-seeded and added sprinklers.  But all this manicured magnificence cost a lot of money for maintenance and water for space that was totally unused.  Like most families, both our private and entertaining lives occurred out back.  La Jolla homes have become nothing if not bastions.

 

But then some toddler grandchildren came on the scene.  Their folks weren’t too keen about the back yard with its brick patio and pool.   My younger son, Henri, lobbied for some comfy lawn chairs so that the adults (that would be him) could sit outside in the grassy front yard and watch the kids play. 

 

I was dubious about the chairs.  First, we have no garage to store them when not in use.  They would block the sprinklers and we’d be perennially dealing with patches of dead grass.  The gardening service would hate them. After a few months in the elements, they’d look awful.  But a year ago Christmas, I finally relented and bought two nice lawn chairs that folded up fairly compactly and could be stored on our back porchlet when the kids were not in town. 

 

As Henri was packing up the chairs at the end of a visit last spring, I told him to leave them in the front yard for a while longer.  I’d been enjoying reading out there and letting our perennially-visiting grand dog have more space to run around.

 

The chairs never went back.  It was true that the gardeners hated them.  They were heavy and hard for me to move.  Paint did start to peel in places.  Patches of dead grass appeared underneath them.  But I found that the happiest part of my day was going outside with my book and communing with nature in my front yard.  Sometimes I just brought out the book to look like I was reading so I wouldn’t look like the crazy lady who sits in her lawn chair and stares.  You can get a reputation pretty easily in my neighborhood.

 

Pretty soon, the newly-retired Olof would come out around 5:00 and join me with his Kindle in the other chair.  If the sun were over the yardarm anywhere within three time zones, we might also have a drink.  Living near the beach, we could watch the pelicans flying in formation back and forth along the coast.  We couldn’t quite see the sun sink below the horizon but we had an excellent west-facing view of the beautiful sunset sky. 

 

It was only a few weeks before we knew every dog within ten blocks and their owners as well.  People would stop on the other side of the three-foot fence and chat with us.  I told Henri over the phone that it felt like a throwback to a time when people sat out on their front porches and waved to the neighbors as they went by.  “Like when you were little,” he said.  “That was the 1930’s,” I replied tersely.  “As I said,” replied Henri.

 

And then an even more interesting thing happened.  Neighbors, seeing us sitting there with adult beverages in our hands, began showing up with their own.  So there was nothing to do but order more chairs, which we did.  On two occasions, a neighbor showed up with his flamenco guitar, a bottle of Rioja and some Manchego cheese and dazzled us all with an impromptu concert. 

 

As the days got shorter, the early fall brought crickets (one of my favorite sounds) and spider webs silhouetted against the twilight sky in our trees.  Olof, an engineer, is fascinated by spider webs.  Me, I was rooting for the flies.

 

The time changed.  Spiders disappeared.  There were now some seriously dead patches in the grass.  Gardeners were getting surly.  We’d pretty much have to be out there by 3:30, a little early even for us, yardarms notwithstanding.  So we brought the chairs in.  But we really miss them.

 

So maybe the next time we haul them out, they’ll stay out.  Maybe our formerly manicured lawn will just have bald patches.  Maybe we’ll have to give the gardeners a raise.  I wistfully confided to Olof that I wouldn’t mind spending the last day of my life in those chairs. He replied, maybe disarm the sprinklers first.

So thanks, Henri.  Wish we’d thought of this ourselves a lot sooner. 



**How An Engineer Makes Cookies

["Let Inga Tell You," La Jolla Light, published January 9, 2014] © 2014 

Two weeks before Christmas, my recently-retired engineer husband suffered an uncharacteristic attack of nostalgia and announced he was going to make his family’s holiday cookie recipes for the kids, his sibs and nieces, and even the neighbors.  I guess man cannot live by Erlangian Distributions alone.

Frankly, this put terror in my heart.  As my Thanksgiving column about my pie-making fiasco made clear, I am not a baker.  Cookies are a lot easier than pie crusts but if Olof, who has never baked anything ever, was counting on me for guidance, this could be a disaster. 

Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately, Olof was able to get his sisters to dig through their old files and find the original recipes for the five types of cookies. What the recipes didn’t say, however, was how many cookies each recipe made.  Not a problem, said Olof, who insisted it required a simple application of undergraduate quantitative analysis.

Some hours later, Olof appeared with FIVE PAGES of spreadsheets, titled “2013 Christmas Cookie Plan” including projected output per recipe, number of cookies of each of the five recipes per recipient, ingredients by recipe, and a fourth one understood only by Olof.  The final spreadsheet tallied up the sum total of ingredients for all five recipes which generated a master shopping list. When I saw that we needed 17.5 cups of flour and 13 sticks of butter, I knew this wasn’t going to be a morning’s work.

“Olof,” I said.  “This is amazing.”

Olof looked genuinely puzzled.  “How else do people make cookies?” he said.

With his engineer’s precision, he set out making the cookies a recipe at a time, including gingerbread men.  I was frankly agog with how well those came out even if a certain number were double amputees.  Originally, he’d thought it would be fun to make one batch of anatomically-correct ginger persons just to punk his sisters but I pointed out that shipping was going to challenging enough without specialty appendage packaging.

What really dazzled me, however, was that he decorating every one of the 70 ginger persons himself with homemade red, green, and white icing.  That had always been his job as a child, he maintained.  It was sort of like riding a bicycle.  You never forget. Twelve hours later, when all the cookies were baked and decorated, he flopped down in his favorite chair and announced “Done!”

Done?  “Olof, my lilla lutfisk,” I said, “Do you plan to beam these around the country?” A frown creased his brow. Logistics Distribution Planning hadn’t really been addressed in the spreadsheets.  He then recalled that getting cookies from grandma in college usually meant a shirt box full of really delicious crumbs, which he would eat with a spoon. 

It went without saying that every last decorative cookie tin had been scoured from the store shelves long since.  After I amassed about $100 worth of packing materials, I divided up the cookies according to the spreadsheet whose projected output had been astoundingly accurate.  Who knew a degree in nuclear physics could have actual practical applications? 

We set up an assembly line where I packaged the cookies individually (no crumbs for us!), padded them in large Tupperware containers ($62), then handed them off with a shipping label to Olof who cocooned them in a landfill’s worth of bubble wrap in boxes. Eco-friendly this wasn’t.

I’d also had him write up a description of the cookies for the recipients as not everyone was familiar with them.  Olof may have missed his calling.  The cherry-topped cookies, for example, were described as “sweet, flaky, and surprisingly suggestive.” 

The day we were finally ready to mail was December 16, the busiest shipping day of the year.  The line at the Pacific Beach post office was out the door.  Waaayy out the door.  “Mental health move, Olof,” I said.  “We’re shipping from a private mailing place.”  It was well worth the $75. 
 
In the end, we could probably have ordered more cheaply from the Lamborghini of bakeries, had the cookies gift-wrapped in gold leaf and hand-delivered in refrigerated sleighs by costumed Santas singing Jingle Bells in two-part harmony with Rudolph. 

But it was fun.  (Mostly.)  It allowed Olof to re-live a favorite part of his youth and hopefully pass the tradition to another generation.  In fact, our niece in Florida reported that her son promptly ate the heads off all the gingerbread men, which made his younger sister cry.  She added, “I’m guessing this scene was probably reminiscent of Uncle Olof and Mom.”  Maybe that wasn’t the tradition he was hoping to pass on.  On second thought, maybe it was. 

But note for next year:  make extra heads.

Flushed with success, Olof has decided to add making a pie to his bucket list.  Have at it, bucko.  I’m not getting anywhere near that one.

Note screwdriver (in dish) as gingerbread person

decorating tool.  (Sterilized)
 

A New Car Just Wasn't In The Cards

["Let Inga Tell You," La Jolla Light, published Jan. 2, 2014]  © 2014 

Recently, a friend invited me to go with her for a reading by her psychic.  The friend swears by this psychic-cum-tarot-card reader and insists that she would never make a major move in her life without consulting this woman. 

I hesitated.  I have not had the best luck with tarot card readings.  Shortly after my former husband and I split up, I wandered into a psychic fair at Balboa Park one Saturday and on a whim, since this was such a pivotal point in my life, sat down at the table of a tarot card reader.  He had me pick a card.  It was a horrifying-looking thing, like death, and indeed turned out to be, ja, the death card.  The reader, mumbling something about being “still in training,” quickly shoved it back into the deck, shuffled the pile and had me pick again.  Same card.  Even though I really don’t believe this stuff, I could feel the sweat break out on my forehead.  The reader, noticing my pallor, began quickly muttering about how there were all kinds of deaths, like, ah…ah..

“Relationships?”  I said hopefully.

“Yes, relationships,” he enthused.  I don’t remember anything else he said other than that I am still alive a couple decades later.

A few years into my impoverished new single life, I attended a New Year’s Day party at the home of some friends who are not into the occult, but had hired a tarot card reader, just for fun, to do readings for any guests who wanted them.  At first I demurred.  Wasn’t chancing that death card a third time.

That very same weekend, I had been presented with irrefutable evidence that my clunker car had to be replaced.  To actually fix all that was wrong with it was going to cost at least $4,000.  Did I want to sink that kind of money into a 10-year-old vehicle considering  that the side mirror had fallen off, the ceiling fabric hung down on my head as I was driving (very annoying), the car made a funny thunk noise when you put on the brakes, and the engine looked like it had sustained a fire.  Still, it was right after Christmas and I desperately needed to keep it running for at least a few more months. 

At the New Year’s party, this tarot card reader came complete with a crystal ball which I kind of liked.  I asked, “Can you just look into the crystal ball and forget the cards?”  She said she actually used both.  I was asked to concentrate on the questions I wanted answered as I picked five cards and placed them face down.  I should mention that everyone else who had already consulted the reader had insisted they received only “good” news.  So I was more than a little dismayed when she turned over the first card and frowned.  “This is bad news.”  (Why me?  Why me?)  “This indicates you might be having some serious financial problems this year.”  I needed to hear this on January first?  I was a chronically-destitute single parent.  I could feel the familiar sweat on my forehead. 

Um,” I said hopefully, “my car broke down this weekend and I’m going to have to replace it and I really don’t know how I’m going to afford it.  Could this be what this means?”

She saw how anxious I was.  “Yes, that could be it.  Some big expense you weren’t planning on.”  We both breathed a sigh of relief.  Even so, I wasn’t sure I wanted her to go on to the next card.  But this one was of a nice looking young lady (the Queen of Hearts, I think it was called) and the one after that a nice friendly-looking man (the King of Hearts?) which apparently indicated that I would be much cared for by a certain man and that I would return the feeling.  Couldn’t argue with that. The fourth card indicated that I was perhaps not fulfilling the career choice of my dreams. (Duh. Like I needed tarot cards to tell me that.)  The last card (something to do with coins) showed this nice friendly looking guy with a bag of money indicating that my future beloved was financially better off than I (which in that era would have encompassed 99.9% of the U.S. population.)  

I said, “Does this mean he’s going to buy me a car?”

She said she couldn’t say.  But, she beamed, she thought he might marry me. 

 “That’s nice,” I said.  “But what I really need is a car.”

Ironically, the tarot reader was right.  I did find the man of my dreams (Olof) who was indeed better off than I was and he ultimately married me and bought me a car.  But not for a lot of years after that reading.  Meanwhile, I bought my own car.  Those cards need some work on time frames.

I passed on my friend’s offer of a reading with her psychic.  Too old for the stress, I said.