by Brian Miller
A few years ago I found myself on a tiny 12-seat plane for the last leg of a trip to college somewhere in the middle of the country. As we sat on the runway waiting to take off, I naturally found myself chatting with the middle-aged lady sitting next to me.
Side note: I love talking to strangers on planes. You have no idea who you’re going to meet. Some of my career highlights developed out of such conversations.
“What do you do?” I ask her.
“I’m a healer,” she replies.
A healer? What could she mean by that? I press for more details and soon come to understand that she means psychic, but she’s avoiding the word ‘psychic’ due to its negative connotation.
“What do you do?” she asks me.
“Believe it or not, I’m a magician.”
We both laughed. What were the odds in all the world that the magician and the healer ended up sitting next to each other on this tiny plane in the middle of nowhere?
The plane has just taken off and started to level out when she asked if she could read my palm. I stared at her, having no idea how to answer.
On one hand – two points for that pun – I know that psychics aren’t real, because they use the exact same tools that a magician does – sleight-of-hand, misdirection, verbal manipulation. This fact has always troubled me, because psychics tend to take advantage of people in desperate situations (even if they mean well).
On the other hand, what am I going to do, say ‘No’ and then just awkwardly sit right next to her for an hour?
So she read my palm and I politely pretended that all of her wrong answers were spot on.
Touring is fun.
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