Fortune Telling

Today I paid $.25 for a seven year old girl to read my fortune. I figured what the hey, her little cardboard and crayola sign was just too cute, and wouldn't it be something if this Little Miss turned out to be a sage disguised as a bubble gum popping ingenue?

Relieved to escape my big girl worries, if only for a moment, I sat down at her table, knees hugged to chest, and held out my hand palm facing up. In a "let's play dollies" tone, which I quickly nixed upon seeing her peachfuzz little brows furrow in disapproval, I asked her what she'd like for me to do. First she asked for the money. Smart little Brooklyn kid. Once tendered and expertly stowed away by a hovering big sister, she instructed me to ask a yes-or-no question. I sat there searching for a PG enough topic, and a topic I felt comfortable disclosing in the mixed company I kept. That nice new friend of a friend didn't need to know the batty state of my life just yet... And my young visionary, not yet a decinarian, didn't deserve to be deflowered by my questions of a nocturnal nature.

I abandoned coital curiosity and existential inquiries for something more immediate and direct. I asked ma petite fortune teller if I'd see the beach before the arrival of 2010. She fumbled in a bowl of clear plastic balls, picked one out, cracked it's shell and unfolded a piece of neon yellow paper with deep concentration. "No" she read with determination, my fate for the next 1.5 months balancing between her chubby yet nimble fingers.

As her sister launched into the no refunds speech, I looked into my little friends eyes and thanked her silently for her honesty and for her wisdom. I don't mean to say that putting ones future in the hands of a 7 year old with a bowl of plastic globes is the best way to determine the course of ones life, but there was something definitive about that moment, even with its negative outcome, that gave me peace. Perhaps because it involved little risk, perhaps because the grown me knows that I can't rely on such an arbitrary verdict. But, in a period of my life where everything is fluid and many things are fleeting, that unshakable "no" was a welcome relief.

And, though I might not see a beach before 2010, there's always 2010.