“When I look at your energy field, you have beautiful orbs of emerald green that are flashing around you, and also form a halo around you with indigo-blue mixed in.”
And so begins my first-ever palm reading.
I’m sitting in a small square office in a large square office building in Beaverton, Ore. My palm reader, who I’ll call Linda, has a shock of curly brown hair, crooked yellow teeth and a smile that makes her face go all wrinkly.
The office contains a very large, plush armchair covered in a brown sheet that’s used for “healing ceremonies.” Plaques with spiritual quotes hang on the walls and large crystals are strewn about the many bookshelves.
I’ll admit it right now: I’m fairly gullible. I believe in ghosts. I think something freaky is going on in the Bermuda Triangle. I definitely avoid breaking any mirrors.
So I was more than a little concerned that I would be totally convinced by everything she said about me.
She begins our meeting with a strange prayer that thanked mother and father earth, and then launches into a reading of my aura.
“You have spirit guides standing behind you, which is why I stared at the wall when you first came in,” she says. “One is a man — he’s much bigger than a person — who has interestingly short hair but a face that is heavenly. The joy on his face is just fantastic, and he chose you because he likes your joy.”
She’s staring at the wall over my left shoulder, smiling at my unseen spirit stalker.
“Next to him I see a woman, who chose you because you are very much caring of people, and she brings you a lot of compassion and kindness,” she continues. “I’m really happy to relay that to you, because when they show up it’s because they want you to know they’re there.” Great, so apparently I have two people always following me around and watching all the stupid stuff I do. My mind immediately names the man Joseph and the woman Marie, which doesn’t help me ignore them.
She then takes my hands and begins tracing the lines in them with a pen, even the lines that are apparently invisible to the un-psychic eye. She declares that I have what are called air hands (“not air head, air hands! Hahahahahaha”), which means that I’m a good thinker and can create things out of thin air.
She points out my life line. “It’s not about how long you’re gonna live — the gypsies make that up and I’m not a gypsy — it’s really about how energy flows through you,” she says. She’s derisively mentioned “the gypsies” several times so far, and it makes me feel more confident in her, for whatever reason.
Until this point I was pretty pleased with myself that I had remained pretty skeptical. It didn’t seem like she was saying anything that couldn’t apply to anyone else.
Then my gullibility took hold.
“When I look at your hand I also get that you always have a lot of fun in relationships,” she says. “Friends that you can laugh with, people that you can enjoy common activities with, so you should really be on some kind of sports team just for fun.”
I had just joined an intramural softball team. Like, two days before this. This had to be proof that she spoke the truth! It had to be!
“When I look at your hand I also look at your relationship area. I see that there are, like, two people pursuing you at the same time,” she says. She checks my face and sees a look of surprise, and quickly amends. “Neither one of them has started quite yet … but you will be asked out by two people, and they both wanna be your guy.” As someone who’s been single since the Bush administration, this was welcome news.
“Truly, I see that guys really like you but they don’t know what to say when they’re around you, so you can help them out with that,” she advises. “It can be as simple as, ‘Oh, my car is making a funny noise. Oh, that funny noise isn’t there now? Oh, well it was!’” I may have to look elsewhere for 21st-century relationship advice.
She concludes our half-hour meeting by determining my soul’s mission in life, which she somehow figures out by looking at my fingerprints.
“Yep, you are in the School of Looooove,” she says, nodding approvingly. “When I look at your hand I see you’re a person that’s very affectionate — you like holding hands and hugging, and things like that. It makes you feel very loved and you like when a person does that with you.” See, roommates? My midnight cuddle attacks are built into me! I can’t help it!
All in all, it was 60 dollars satisfactorily spent (especially because I can write it off as a work expense!) I received some lovely compliments about my good traits and excuses for my bad ones. (Air hands have days where they just have no energy? License to stay in bed all day!)
I may not be a total convert to palmistry, but Linda certainly had me convinced that night that she could see into my soul. As we ended our meeting, she gave me a conspiratorial wink and a smile.
“It’s amazing what your hands show, right?”