Am I a Believer……..?

The year we dropped BigBrother off for his freshman year at college I was thirteen. On the way home we stopped at a seaside vacation town. On the boardwalk, sandwiched in between the salt water taffy kitchen and a tschoky souvenir place, stood a small store front with a hand painted window sporting an All Seeing Eye and crystal ball with the words Fortunes Told.

I had five dollars the parents had given me to spend on the rides on the boardwalk.

Instead I decided to invest it in my future and went in!

The shop was dark and draped in paisley shawls with lots of fringe. A small table sat in the middle of the room with the requisite crystal ball. I was impressed and amused at the same time.

Now I should state here that even at the ripe old age of thirteen I didn’t believe in fortune tellers or mediums or the occult.

I just thought it was fun.

I plunked down my five dollars, sat down at the table and waited for the old woman to do her ‘shtick’.

I guess I must have said or done something (who would have thought…...) that made her angry.

Because she proceeded to tell me that she didn’t usually tell people the bad things she saw in her crystal ball but in my case she’d make an exception.

She told me, point blank, I was going to die in a car accident in a green Pontiac when I was eighteen.

I wasn’t laughing quite as much when I left as I was when I walked in.

Still, I didn’t really believe it. And as long as I stayed out of green Pontiacs I would be okay, right?

I didn’t give it much thought for the next five years.

Fast forward to my eighteenth year. I started dating a guy who drove; you guessed it, a green Pontiac.

Possibly this was a subconscious choice I made, but I didn’t know what kind of car he drove until AFTER I accepted the date with him.

Hmmmm……

It all worked out okay though, because not long after we began dating he traded the Pontiac for a Toyota.

I was safe!

Until one day when my parents excitedly told me they had just bought a new car!

I was excited too, having just gotten my license. I asked what kind they bought and my mother said, a beautiful green Pontiac Lemans!

Gulp!

I thought I had escaped the fortune teller’s prediction and now here it was rearing its ugly head again!

I must have looked funny because my parents asked me what was wrong, so I told them about the fortune teller.

My mother immediately went to the phone and……changed the color of the car they ordered to blue.

Her most UNFAVORITE color in the world she told me!

“Not that I believe in such things,” she said, “but if anything did happen to you in that car I’d feel responsible! No need to take chances!”

(My parents were level headed but superstitious to a fault!)

So, all’s well that ends well…….

Except for that one night on Elwood Road in the pouring rain when a car cut me off and I jammed on the brakes, did a 360° and finally came to a stop nose to nose with a family in a station wagon in the opposite lane of oncoming traffic!

I can still see the look of sheer terror on their faces. And I was so scared I went straight home and didn’t drive for a week!

True story!