I’ve noticed an interesting thing about myself – my natural tendency to observe body language and predictable circumstance. I wouldn’t call it premonition or anything like that. It’s merely the ability to put two and two together, quickly. It’s like a keen common sense or just reading and trusting gut reaction. I suppose a psychologist would call them self-fulfilling prophecies. Whatever it is, I’ve done it since 8th grade. Or rather, I noticed I had the talent for it in 8th grade; though looking back, my first real memory of this occurrence was as a child riding with my babysitter in her car.
At that time I was 8 or 9, and we had come to a stop on the road outside my favorite restaurant, Wooly Bully’s. We’d go there for Sunday brunch after church, but this particular day we were just driving by. I hadn’t put my seatbelt on and I had this strong notion that a seatbelt would be important. I reached back, pulled it across me and buckled myself in. My babysitter stepped on the gas and almost as soon as we jerked into motion we slammed to another complete stop. I heard my sister in the back seat cry out with pain while I gasped for breath. My babysitter’s lip was bleeding, she had bitten through it. A cop came to the accident, so did an ambulance and a woman with two cups of ice cream (she had witnessed the crash from her post at Baskin-Robbins). I think the ice cream put the sheer coincidence of the situation out of my mind until a few years later.
When I was about 13, I was drawn to an ugly little porcelain elephant for who knows what reason; perhaps because the delicate creature fit perfectly into the palm of my hand. I liked the weight of it sitting there, and I liked the idea that it had some mystery behind it. It was my mother’s and was therefore older than me. If an ugly misshapen elephant could last that long then it must have some magic power, right? So I stole it off my mother’s bookshelf and proclaimed it as mine. I decided I’d take it to school with me, set it on my desk. I’d just leave it there and see if anyone noticed, as if it were show and tell. He’d be my little algebra test companion. Only… when I thought about the algebra test I had the most distinct feeling that there wouldn’t be one. Not today. Today the teacher would be absent and the Sub would postpone it one more day.
Laughing at the thought, I pocketed the beast and marched out of the house. If only the teacher really were absent from school. I could have really used an extra day to study since I wasn’t much of a studier anyway. The entire ride to school I couldn’t shake the niggling feeling that my prediction was true, though. But what would be the odds of that? When I got to class, I set my elephant on my desk and watched as a woman I didn’t recognize wrote her name on the chalk board. She spelled it out in big, loopy letters before turning to the class to announce that she was our Sub and that this day’s test would be put off until tomorrow. My mouth spread open. Full of myself, I looked around to see if anyone would know that the math teacher was missing because of
me, that I had been right, and to see if they were secretly congratulating me. They weren’t. But I specifically remember hoping they would.
Slightly disappointed, I looked at the elephant. It wasn’t so ugly as I thought under the bright florescent lighting. The porcelain glaze had been painted quite nicely over its trunk and back, thicker in areas to indicate a fold of skin or a miniature wrinkled tendon. My hand caressed the smooth surface, and I could imagine myself stealing power from the object through the tips of my fingers. Now that was a ridiculous thought, as wild as my imagination was even I knew how un-magical the animal (made in Germany, no less!) was. So although I looked astonished, it was more for the benefit of any onlookers who I hoped would ask what I was staring at… rather than because I was actually astonished. Okay Mr. Elephant, I thought to myself, let’s try again. The teacher for my next class will be absent, also. We’ll watch a movie instead.
Walking into 2nd block, there was another stranger behind the teacher’s podium. He announced that the teacher would be gone for the next couple days and in the meantime we’d be working in pairs to complete some project or other. That was 2 for 2… or well almost since there was no movie. I wanted to tell someone, but who would believe me? I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it again, but what if it didn’t work? So instead I settled for lucky coincidence, and avoided the disappointment of calling the elephant to bring another prediction to life and having it fail.
But it didn’t end there. In my 9th grade year I was figure skating and although I was never Michelle Kwan, I’d never taken a serious fall either. I was out on the ice practicing Tstops when the thought of twisting my ankle popped into my head. I pushed it away, focusing on my footwork. I glided on my right leg, opening my left from the hip. With my left boot tucked neatly behind the right in 4th position, thus forming an upside down T, I relaxed onto the outside edge of the blade. Instead of scratching the ice until coming to a complete standstill, I put too much weight on my left leg. It rocked forward off the edge and toe picked into the ice while I was still being propelled forward by momentum. My right leg, the leg I can’t balance well on, kicked out from under me and I flipped backward. Thus twisting my left ankle in the process. Gasping, I could hear my coach yelling for me to get up and try it again, but all I could do was lay there. Nobody was coming to my rescue. No one seemed to notice that I had fallen. So I started to cry, keening louder and louder until I heard someone shout “She’s not getting up.” Then everyone was around me asking if I was okay, telling me to lay still, telling me not to take off my boot. Over and over I yelled “Take it off, take it off” feeling my ankle swell like a watermelon in a tin can. The coach wouldn’t let me, proclaiming that the boot would keep any broken bones in alignment. But then… I knew I hadn’t broken any bones. I said as much and started unlacing the boot by myself as someone’s hands grabbed mine to keep me from doing any damage. “NOTHING’S BROKEN… I’LL BE FINE IF I CAN JUST GET THIS UNLACED!”
A voice above my head spoke rationally, “you were crying just now, obviously you are not fine.” How could I explain to her that I was crying to gain attention? I couldn’t so I ripped my hands away from her and continued to unlace my boot while promising not to remove it.
In eleventh grade I was driving to school, a mere 2 miles away. I was tailing a smallish blue car in a long line of cars all trekking to the same location: the high school parking lot. As I passed through the first intersection I had a thought that I ought to back off, give the car some space; so I took my foot off the gas and gave the car a full 3 second head start like we’d been taught to do in driver’s ed. I think I may have even clocked it against a traffic sign. The car sped up and got away from me, but as I tapped the pedal to pick up my pace another car shot out from a subdivision and slammed into the side door of the blue car. The blue car spun into another car before careening into the ditch. My heart had leapt into my throat and the sound of the crash was echoing in my ears. It was a loud short bang, not at all what you’d expect to hear. I wrestled with myself about stopping to help, people were already rushing from nearby houses, but I pulled over since I’d had a front row seat and offered my assistance. No one needed it. One kid climbed out of the backseat of the car with a beard of blood, but he seemed to be the only casualty and he was walking just fine. I saw Tiffany Kelly jump into the driver’s side door and insist that everyone remain calm and as a lifeguard she’d be able to help. It made me sick because I also knew she was only doing it for attention. I turned to the kid who’d gotten out of the other car to ask if I should do anything, call an ambulance or something, but he’d said someone had already done that. We discussed what had happened, how the other car’s driver hadn’t looked both ways and how the crash could have been much worse had I been tailing the blue car.
After that I returned to my car, feeling slightly useless and even more ridiculous for even pretending I could help. I told myself I wouldn’t be a gossipmonger and would avoid telling anyone. Yet my whole body was shaking, thinking that could have been me with a blood smeared jaw, I had to tell someone even if it was just to brag that I’d seen an accident. So when I got to school I told the woman in the main office that there had been an accident, that traffic was all backed up and that several people might be late to classes this morning. It was the most reserved thing I could think to say, since my next inclination was to tell her that I’d witnessed it all and could have been in it. I didn’t, but I still felt like a hypocrite – making light of a situation and bragging that it could have been me – and I beat myself up for it.
Later that day I overheard kids talking about how Tiffany had witnessed it all and had jumped in and saved someone. I turned around in my seat and told them that it happened right in front of me and that Tiffany hadn’t even been there until after the kid with the blood beard had gotten out of the car. I also mentioned she hadn’t saved anyone and was probably more of a nuisance than a help. So I was a hypocrite, but at least I felt better knocking her off her high horse.
To this day, I will think something might happen minutes before it does. From the car in front of me turning a certain direction, to knowing what a friend might say. Not like it happens all the time… but it makes me feel special when I pick a winning scratch-off based on an inkling or decide to look at someone at exactly the moment they choose to look at me. I wish there were a way to hone this… to become a mind reader or psychic!
1:15 to 2:00 - A very long trek up to the library. Past the old horse field (that tree I used to climb and has a ton of carvings on it), past CVS which used to be Arbor Drugs back in the day (used to bike there as a kid... back when you didn't need a bike lock), past one of the oldest houses in Novi. And finally, the library! I hook Lily up on the park bench just outside the door so I can run in and grab the book I put on hold.
