My search is over. (PSYCH!)

For those of you who plan to do Psychic Anything after retirement, I urge you to start now.  Even if you're still in utero.

But ... hold on.  If this is your "calling," fate may have already penciled it in for you!  It should show up on your brain stem's calendar in a dream.  "Destiny - March 29 - 2:15 AM"?  That's it.  (And here you thought you'd scheduled an appointment at a 24-hour pedicure place.)

My "Psychic Development" class was taught by Jamie - a calm, hypnotically commanding woman who believes everyone has psychic abilities begging to be coaxed from moldy hiding places in our right-brain storm sewer systems.  (Pre-paraphrased for your convenience.)

When I signed up, I expected the leader would appear in a purple satin, star-splattered robe and way too much eye shadow.  The fact that Jamie was a regular person means my childhood included entirely too much Bugs Bunny, and a total lack of all things psychic.

Oops.

That is not true.

As if gazing into a crystal ball the size of our teacher's head, I accidentally conjured up an image from the Please-Let's-All-Just-Forget-This Department of my memory.

(Cue the Eerie Organ Music.)

I grew up in rural Wyoming.  The kind of rural that meant my sister Jenny and I looked both ways for stampeding cattle before crossing the dirt road where our school bus tossed us each afternoon.

My sister Debby graduated from high school in the late sixties and moved to California - the bravest thing I'd witnessed in my whole ten years.  She returned one summer in a car that was loaded down with incense and driven by a husband named Paul.

Like I said.  She was brave.

It took a decade for happenings on either coast to penetrate our state's borders, so we hadn't heard much about hippie people before Debby and Paul arrived.  Paul also redefined the term "exotic" since he was our town's first import who had lived in New York and California.  He was practically European!

Debby and Paul were vegetarian so nobody could figure out how they were still alive.  A group of local ranch wives, The Fremont County Cow Belles, held prayer vigils in case the young couple's affliction was contagious.  Every time either of them had as much as a sniffle, my father would smack his forehead and say, "Eat a hamburger!"

They brought a waterbed from California, too.  I should not tell you what my father said about that.

So they settled in with the ranchers and hunters, in spite of their gathering ways.  They had my nephew, Cutest Baby On The Whole Planet (we called him Joshua for short), and things seemed okay - until they got weird.

(Volume UP on the Eerie Organ Music.)

One day, for reasons I still can't divine, Paul explained auras to me.  He talked with big, wavy arm motions and eyebrow crescendos about seeing what others were feeling.  Like a mood ring shaped as a force field - but neither of those concepts had yet migrated to Wyoming, either.  (And, unfortunately for everyone, I was still comfy in my cocoon of adolescent ignorance.)

I freaked completely out.

I believed Californians had Special Spooky Vision and when I broke this news to my parents, Paul got in big trouble.

Then I was really worried.  Who knew it was even POSSIBLE to get an adult in trouble?  All I wanted was for my parents to agree that Paul was crazy and to promise they'd continue telling me what I was thinking when I needed to know.

But Paul's Special Spooky Vision didn't show him how sorry I was, and the idea to tell him out loud never surfaced.  I hoped my aura would hit on the right color.

No dice.

Which leads me back to today's class.

(Eerie Organ Music OFF.)

No crystal ball, but plenty of talk about auras and chakras and channeling and my Sponge Brain was happy to soak it all up.  I've decided "scary" takes on a whole new meaning if you survive high school.

I stared at Jamie until I could see her aura.  It told me she was kind and loving.  I looked around the room; my classmates' auras told me the same thing.  It was thrilling - I had my new hobby!

The truth hit after class when the aura of every person on the street chirped, "I'm kind and loving, too!"  The odds against this in our downtown area are astronomical.

I also remembered that auras don't have special speaking abilities - nor are they scratch-n-sniff.  They just cling to people like pleasantly colored fog, even if the wearer is in a road-rage scented mood.

The session ended with each of us doing a "reading" on a classmate.  I flunked the class.  Developing my psychic ability as a post-retirement hobby would be a full-time job from which I'd surely be fired. 

Just write down everything that comes to you as you sit quietly with this person, Jamie told us.

I stared into the eyes of the gentleman to my left for three whole minutes and doubted every single thought that came to me.  I made up his life story, which my brain quite naturally turned into an after-school special starring someone other than the man himself.

My psychic ability had shifted into reverse!

I worried about hurting his feelings, so I spent most of my three minutes storing every wrinkled detail of his face in my right brain's storm sewer system.

I finally scribbled down random words, and he was nice enough to nod and smile as I read the list out loud.

WOW!  Did I get it right?  Was he the salty sea captain of a high-speed barge loaded with stolen orthopedic flip-flops that caught fire off the coast of Uruguay?

No.  He was not.

He was, however, uncannily perceptive.  His list after staring at my eyeballs included "uncomfortable with fluorescent lighting," "wishes she knew how to dance," and - strangely enough - "kind and loving."

If my search for the perfect hobby ever includes a portraiture class, I hope this same gentleman shows up in the chair to my left.

I have an inner feeling I'll do an awful job drawing wrinkles, and a real strong hunch he'll be pleased with the results.

(What are you doing next Friday?  Want to learn about BEGINNING ADULT BALLET?  I knew it!  Maybe I AM psychic!  See you then.)