Every once in
awhile—okay, like maybe once in the last twenty years, until one recent day—I
will look at a word and not know what it is I am seeing. The letters seem
vaguely familiar, but that’s about it.
Sure, I have often seen a
word and been bothered by the fact that I don’t know what it means. I have some
four million year old SAT scores as proof. But there is context and a
dictionary to solve that sort of problem.
And with a son on the verge of taking his own SATs, I am overcome with
the urge to learn a whole bunch of new words.
Really. Maybe with a glass of
wine and a nibble of cheese.
But, what I mean to
discuss here is this: Even if only once
or twice, I have looked at a word,
one that I have both seen and used
before, and then turned it into something it is not. The first time it happened, the word was
heredity. Heredity. The noun.
Genetic makeup. You know what I
am saying. Heredity.
On one particular day,
though, all I could see when I looked at the word heredity [huh-red-i-tee] was something that sounded out in my head as [here-ditty]. Rhymes with, “Here,
kitty.” This was a long time ago. I have even laughed about the experience,
unusual only in that I did not see it as a sign of some sort of fatal brain malfunction.
Now here I am, some (plus
a few more) years later. I go out to my car. Folded over in the door handle is a
flyer. Ordinarily, I would crumple up
something like this without reading it.
I don’t know why I look. Maybe it
is the joy of it not being a parking ticket.
I don’t know how to scan
things, so I am going to try to recreate it here, in my own, old- world way.
PSYCHIC
“SOULMATE SPECIALIST”
Reuniting Lovers Permanently,
even if taken by another.
i can
help you
In Love Business and Health
Palm and Tarot Card Readings $5. Special
CALL NOW!
This is exactly how it
was written. I have left off the phone
number and address for obvious reasons, the first two being to save you the $5 and
to save you from making a fool of yourself—because, yes, I am that nice.
Here is what I saw in
first looking at the flyer: PSYCHIC, which
had turned into a word that sounded like
[sy-sheek]—a made-up word, perhaps, but not one without meaning. I do
believe that what I thought was being advertised were the services of a
fashionable person who is also in the business of psychology. Maybe, I surmised, the woman was a psychoanalyst
with that extra ounce of panache—or, someone who was offering their expertise
to a psychiatrist in desperate need of a wardrobe makeover. Finally, it started to sound like the title
for a magazine article about what the well-dressed psychologist might wear.
Obviously, I was
wrong. This was just another psychic
flyer (no, the flyer itself was not psychic), one of the many that finds its
way to the windshields and door handles of cars all across Los Angeles. I read on.
“SOULMATE
SPECIALIST”
Reuniting
Lovers Permanently,
even if
taken by another.
I guess it’s got
something to do with “soulmate” being the important distinction here. Yet, I
started to wonder about what would happen if a person were to be reunited with
his or her lover (“even if taken by another”).
What if the “another” came to the psychic afterwards, looking to be
reunited with the lover who is now “permanently” back together with his or her
ex? Isn’t this already a Taylor Swift song?
Then I started to
worry. Three years ago, I wrote a blog
piece about a fortune-teller and her daughter who had been murdered by a client
seeking to be reunited with her ex-boyfriend.
I don’t know what worried me more—the prospect of another homicide or
the fact that I thought I had written that other blog piece like, maybe, a year
ago, not three. I thought about calling
the psychic from the flyer to warn her about crazy people, but I decided that
if she were worth her salt, she’d know already. Clearly, the deceased fortune-teller had
lacked some critical seeing-the-future skills.
I read on.
i can
help you
In Love Business and Health
Let me first say to the
psychic whose flyer was on my car, “I can help you with grammar and punctuation!”
Not only because you need help, but because I want to know, are you able
to assist in only “love business” or did you mean love and business? Bring on the comma if you meant the latter—which
might bring you a larger client base, as well.
Just trying to help.
One thing is for
sure. I don’t want any information from
the psychic. No future stuff. But if she can tell me whether it’s okay to
wear blue suede boots with a black dress, I’m going to call Bloomingdale’s to
see if the Stuart Weitzman’s are on sale. Come to think of it, she should be able to tell me that, as well.
