Me, happy? Sorry, it’s not in the cards

If there’s any truth at all to astrology, fortune telling, tarot cards, precognition or any other psychic phenomena in which the future is predicted, I may as well climb into bed, pull the covers over my head, and stay there. Forever.

My actual, day-to-day life is OK, but the future prognosticators typically foresee for me — on those occasions I’m foolish enough to ask — is flat-out lousy. 

The first time I was psychically slapped upside the head I was at Cedar Point with my friend, Rose. I’m not a big roller coaster guy (unless you count my relationships) but Rose loved them, so there we were. 

After getting my brains scrambled on the aptly named Mean Streak, I was ready for something more sedate. Fortunately, the park maintains a “Frontier Town” area, complete with a quiet, non-brain scrambling museum filled with old stuff that’s fun to look at while your corn dog and cheesy fries digest.

Hidden away in a dark corner of this museum is an actual, working fortune telling machine. You slip in your penny, pull a lever and voila, a card bearing your fortune in 7-point type pops out.

I’m not sure what the science is behind this device. Probably has something to do with chaos theory, black holes and the space-time continuum, but I was an English major and can’t even balance my checkbook without a calculator. Esoteric physics theories are forever beyond me.

At any rate, Rose’s penny delivered a card with the sort of fortune one might expect for a penny; happiness, wealth and a rich, full love life lay in her future. The fortune my penny delivered was considerably less rosy.

According to the card — and I only wish I were kidding here — my future included ill health, disastrous financial decisions and (this is an exact quote) “dying alone and lonely.” The only “good” thing the card predicted was a long life; the better to enjoy my poverty and sickness, lucky me.

What sort of fortune telling sadist would even write a card like this? Being a rational, 21st century man, I decided to ignore it. Time passed and I forgot all about that card.

Until last Friday.

That’s when I met with the tarot card reader, a “clairsentient” named Pam. Pam runs a fortune-telling service and I was interviewing her and one of her clients for a story. After the interview, Pam offered to give me a free “reading.”

I told her I don’t really believe in all that hooey, but the price was right and the place I had interviewed her served martinis. I figured what the heck.

As soon as she began dealing from the tarot deck, I knew I was in trouble. The initial hand — something called the Celtic Cross, if I’m remembering correctly — showed that I was going to have problems at work. As she moved around the cards, she also predicted problems at home, financial troubles and a romantic future more devoid of life than the surface of Mars.

“That’s OK,” Pam said, looking worried, shuffling the deck. “Why don’t you try asking a few yes/no questions and we’ll see what the cards say?”

“OK,” I said, hoping for a reprieve from the previous fortune, or at least an amendment of some sort. “Will I find love?”

Pam shuffled, dealt three cards, all but one of which appeared upside down. Upside down cards, it turns out, are not a good thing. Pam looked apologetic, and maybe a little nervous to be sitting so close to me when it was fast becoming apparent lighting could strike at any moment.

“Money?” I asked. “Will I finally have some this year?”

Three cards, including “Death” and “The Hanged Man,” slipped out of the deck, all upside down. Pam casually inched away from me.

“Well, I’ll be broke and alone,” I said. “Will I at least be happy?”

The cards didn’t actually burst into flames, but they might as well have. I don’t remember which cards Pam dealt, but they were all upside down, all bad.

Pam spent the next hour or so trying to assure me the message of the cards was not written in stone, that things could, conceivably, maybe, possibly, change. But I could tell she didn’t really believe it.

Between antique penny carnival machines and professional mediums, there seems to be a psychic consensus forming around my life. Is it enough to make me a true believer? Let’s just say, the cards say no.

But it makes me wonder if my recent purchase of a black cat was such a great idea.

Mike Taylor’s book, “Looking at the Pint Half Full,”  is available at Robbins Book List in Greenville and in Kindle format from Amazon.com. Email Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.

The Russians owe me thirty bucks! Pay up, comrade

Gde moy tridtsat' baksov? According to Google Translate, I’m going to have to learn how to say that — preferably in a manly, no-nonsense voice — if I’m ever to get the thirty bucks the Russians owe me. They really do owe me the money, too.

But I’m going to have to be careful. I’ve seen enough old James Bond flicks to know that, should I make the Russians mad enough, they will a) strap me to a table and cut me in half with a high-powered laser beam, b) come for me in the middle of the night and lock me away in a Siberian gulag where I will be forced to live on a diet of moldy bread and melted snow, or c) drop a nuclear bomb on Washington.

The Russians, obviously, are not to be trifled with.

Still, they owe me that thirty bucks and with Washington being what it is these days, a nuclear bomb might not be the worst thing that could happen there. (Kidding! I do not need the NSA on my butt as well as whatever’s left of the KGB.)

Maybe I’d better back up a minute.

For the past four years, I’ve had a great relationship with the Russians; with one Russian, anyway. His name is Vladimir Aleksander, which, you must admit, is one cool name. Vladimir owns what I assume is a fairly large publishing concern in Moscow; his company publishes several English language print and electronic newspapers and magazines.

A few summers ago I started writing horoscopes for Vladimir. He needed a writer who could speak English (I can!) and make sense of a Google-translated horoscope originally written in Russian by a Russian astrologer (I could not, but pretended I could in order to pick up the $300 per month Vladimir was willing to shell out for this service).

Since astrology is (I believe) nothing more than mass delusion — much like people thinking Divorce Court is entertainment — I didn’t feel too guilty about taking Vladimir’s cash. And my horoscopes, while not remotely accurate, were as accurate as any other horoscopes you’ve ever read.

Somewhere along the way, Vladimir found out I also wrote this Reality Check column and asked if he could include it in some of his publications. Since I was already practically robbing the poor guy with regard to the horoscope deal, I told him he could pull the column off the Internet and run it gratis whenever he liked.

Well, it turned out he liked to run it a lot. He continued to print my column every week even when I stopped writing the horoscope for him, nearly two years ago.

Because I’m a lousy businessman, I never gave it a thought until a couple months back when I checked the stats on my blog — mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com — where my column appears each week. It turns out about a full third of my online readership is now headquartered in Russia.

On one hand, I’m flattered Vladimir considers my little column worthy of his big city readership. Moscow has a population of over 11,503,500 citizens, at least seven of whom read Reality Check every week! On the other hand (the one that likes holding money) an extra thirty bucks a week would come in handy next time the electric bill is due.

On the third hand (I’m gonna need at least three, maybe more, to make this work) I don’t want to wind up strapped to a table with a high powered laser beam inching toward my nether regions. It seems a big risk for just thirty bucks.

On the fourth hand (told ya) $30 U.S. equals 968 Russian rubles, which sounds like a whole LOT of loot. I’m not greedy by nature, but 968 rubles buys a lot of Borscht, man! If I ever have to move to Russia (as seems all too likely by the time the IRS gets done with me) I could live like a king on that kind of money.

So. Laser beam, gulag, poverty … none of my choices seem particularly desirable. For now I guess I’ll just do what I always do: send my column to Russia. With love.

Mike Taylor’s book, “Looking at the Pint Half Full,” is available at Robbins Book List in Greenville and online in ebook format at Amazon.com.

Cats and extension ladders; no good can come from owning either

There’s no good reason an acrophobic person should own an extension ladder, but I do. It’s a good one — reeeeaaaal long — that I inherited when an ex-girlfriend moved out of her house and decided she no longer wanted it.

I’ve had the ladder a few years now, but have never used it other than to loan it out to friends who do not suffer from my entirely rational and understandable fear of heights.

As phobias go, a fear of heights isn’t the worst card I could have drawn from life’s capricious deck. I mean, some people suffer from amaxophobia, the fear of riding in a car. I experience this to some degree while riding in my daughter’s Kia, but so would any sane person. She’s driven for over 15 years without once glancing at the road.

Then there’s bibliophobia, the fear of books. I would hate to suffer from this one. I’m a voracious reader and can’t imagine having to resort to Judge Judy or Divorce Court for my entertainment needs.

I eat at the local Chinese joint at least once a week, so consecotaleophobia would be especially debilitating for me. (Consecotaleophobia’s the fear of chopsticks, of course. Can’t believe you didn’t already know this.)

My point is, there are worse phobias than a fear of heights. All one need do to avoid acrophobia’s symptoms is keep one’s feet on the ground. This I do at all times. Most of the time.

Sadly, we live in a world where light bulbs must be changed, gutters must be cleaned, where stupid, stupid, STUPID cats jump on the roof and get stuck there.

My cat, Friday Magoo, is such a cat.

He is mostly an indoor cat, but he so loves to kill small, defenseless creatures that I let him out from time to time just so he can sate his deplorable, feline bloodlust. Usually, Friday’s kills consist of moths and spiders, but once in a while he snags a small snake or rodent, which quickly becomes unidentifiable.

I know it’s all part of the Disney-esque circle of life, but try telling that to the field mouse being eviscerated for the sole purpose of preventing a cat from getting bored.

Anyway, though my opinion of feline behavior in general is not particularly commendatory, I do like my own cat. So when the idiot got himself stuck up on my roof, I felt obliged to rescue him.

He jumped there from the top of my wood pile, climbed to the highest point and then decided that he, too, is acrophobic.

My first impulse was to simply wait him out. Cats are by nature morons, but I figured he would eventually realize he could get down again by leaping to the wood pile, then to the ground. He would get hungry or bored and then return to earth.

Unfortunately, night was coming on and it looked like rain. I couldn’t just go inside and leave him up there, meowing his fool head off.

So for the first time ever, I dragged the extension ladder out of the garage with the intention of actually using the thing myself. Just the thought of it made my knees go all funny.

It took me a good 20 minutes to screw up my courage to climb the ten feet or so to the rooftop and another five to find the guts to step off onto the roof, which I suddenly realized is more steeply sloped than the southeast face of Everest.

Looking directly at my feet and nowhere else, I managed to inch my way up the roofline while Friday Magoo lounged against the chimney loudly meowing his opinion that I was not moving fast enough.

The world spun out below me like something from an Alfred Hitchcock thriller; fellow acrophobics (acrophobes? acrophobians? I’m too lazy to look it up) will understand. I reached the roof’s peak just as the last of the feeling left my legs. I slumped to a sitting position as a black streak zipped past my field of vision and rocketed off the roof.

I chanced glancing down. There in the yard, autumn leaves wafting lazily around his fuzzy haunches, sat Friday Magoo. An “aren’t we having fun now?” look graced his furry face.

I’m writing this, so obviously I eventually escaped the roof myself. It took several hours for my knees to stop knocking.

My new neighbor, Andy, has a great big, loud, scary-looking dog. “Sugar” is a sweetheart and mostly harmless, but Friday Magoo doesn’t know this.

I can’t wait to introduce them.

Mike Taylor’s book, “Looking at the Pint Half Full,” is available at Robbins Book List in downtown Greenville and in Kindle format from Amazon.com.

Sometimes, it’s OK to give up your principals and no, that’s not a typo

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away (so it seems to me now) I worked in a classroom filled with third-graders.

Children. Stinky, sticky, noisy children. A whole room full of the little hairless monkeys!

I loved it. Kids are fun and I’ve always enjoyed their company. They’re more honest than adults, more creative, confident. They’re everything we are, but without all the filters and hangups that choke the happiness out of us later in life.

They haven’t had time to put up the walls that we, as adults, spend most of our lives hiding behind.

Sure, by the time they turn 13 or 14, children enter that degenerative process known as puberty, transforming them from “cute kid” to “surly teenager you feel you must ignore in order to avoid killing him with your bare hands,” but that doesn’t last forever. It only seems it does. And once they’re adults, you miss even those teen years. I do, anyway, at least when it comes to my own kids. On the other hand, I do not miss the lilting tones of Dr. Dre and Wu-Tang Clan thumping through the walls of my house.

But I digress. Frequently.

The point is, I loved working in the classroom. I loved the kids, the hours, the summers off with pay, the awesome health insurance (it was back then), the smell of chalk dust. 

What didn’t I love? I can sum that up with a joke my students used to tell: “I don’t mind school, it’s the principal of the thing I can’t stand.”

Now, before you principals get yourselves all lathered up and start writing me nasty letters filled with the sort of edu-speak that would make a thesaurus-writer scratch his head, let me say this: I’ve only worked under one principal and she’s the one I hated. I’m sure there are many administrators who are lovely people, though I wouldn’t want my sister to marry one. Kidding. But seriously, stay away from my sister.

The principal I worked under was simply not my cup of tea. It wasn’t really her fault; it was a personality thing. I had one, she didn’t. (Please feel free to insert “meooooowww!” sound here.)

Sure, I’m being catty, but it is very rare I meet someone I don’t like and I don’t handle it well when it happens. I always assumed she was the worst principal ever. Turns out she’s not even close.

I just read an article about Dana Carter, a principal at Calimesa Elementary School in California’s San Bernardino County. Shortly after accepting the position, Carter decreed (that seems the right word here) that all students must bow down on one knee when addressing him.

The students were to remain kneeling until he “released” them with a wave of his arms. Apparently, there was no scepter involved, but one can only assume it was just a matter of time.

The article didn’t mention his office chair, but I’m guessing it’s ornately carved and at least a few inches higher than the other chairs in his office.

It didn’t take long for parents to complain to the school board and that was the end of King Carter’s reign.

So. Principal that I used to work for, I hereby take back at least one of the many terrible things I have, over the years, said about you. You’re not the worst principal ever.

Now can I have my old job back? I miss those summer vacations.

More of Mike Taylor’s Reality Check online at mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com. Contact: mtaylor325@gmail.com.

On the case with agent Double-O-Zero

Taylor. Mike Taylor. And I’ll have that martini shaken, not stirred.

It was something out a spy movie, my drive through Grand Rapids last Wednesday. I had a couple hours to kill before an appointment there, so I was tooling around town, visiting places from my past — the house I grew up in, my old parish, an apartment complex I’d lived in when the kids were little.

It was while leaving the latter that I was suddenly sucked into the spy movie. I was turning right out of the complex; the blonde in the red compact next to me was turning left. As she passed, I noticed a package sitting on the trunk; it slid a few inches to the right, then back to the left as her car pulled out of its turn.

For a moment, I considered ignoring the situation, which fell squarely, I reasoned, into the SEP (Somebody Else’s Problem) category. Then my Catholic guilt kicked in and I fell in behind the red car.

Mike Taylor to the rescue. Think nothing of it, ma’am!

Following close behind, I honked my horn a couple times in a manner meant to convey the following message: “Hey! Lady! You’ve got a package sliding around on your trunk and if there’s anything breakable in there, I think you can kiss it goodbye the first time you hit a bump.”

Apparently my message was misinterpreted; the driver glanced angrily into her rearview mirror and gestured half a peace sign in my general direction.

Okay, I thought. Just a misunderstanding. I’ll explain it to her at the traffic light, just ahead.

She rolled to a stop at the Plainfield Avenue intersection. I eased up behind her, put my car in park and opened the door. I saw her see me in her side mirror; I smiled and waved in a manner meant to convey the following message: “Hey lady. I’m just trying to help here. Not a serial killer or road-raged lunatic or anything. Just relax and let me get you that package off your trunk there.”

But again my message was misunderstood (I have this problem a lot with women, for some reason). Her eyes went wide and she shot through the red light, narrowly missing a minivan sporting Yosemite Sam mud flaps. The van’s driver honked, but by this time the lady was too busy trying to escape the crazed maniac (me) to bother with bird flipping.

Sighing, I climbed back behind the wheel, waited for the light to change, then — determined to do this good deed if it took all day — continued to trail the red compact.

After all, that box sliding around on her truck might contain life-saving medicine for her sick toddler, or the ashes of her recently deceased husband, or priceless family heirlooms, carefully wrapped in tissue paper, but still vulnerable to a high speed fall from a red compact car.

Or maybe, I thought, the box is packed with hundred dollar bills, money from a drug payoff. In which case I would face the unenviable task — should the box fall off and I recover it — of deciding whether to turn it in to the police or keep it for myself. Catholic guilt is all well and good, but it would be nice to be able to pay my electric bill on time for a change.

No, no, I would turn it in. Oh, no, I wouldn’t! Yes, I would. I could almost see the little angel on my left shoulder, the little devil on my right.  They never get along.

Or maybe the box didn’t contain drug money at all, but the drugs themselves. Half a million dollar’s worth of uncut Bolivian cocaine (if you’re a druggie and this reference makes no sense, you’ll have to forgive me; I don’t use drugs myself and am therefore unfamiliar with the nomenclature). 

If drugs, I suppose I would feel compelled to turn them over to the cops. But if I did, would they think I was somehow complicit? If they tracked down the drug dealer, would I be subpoenaed to testify at his trial? And if so, would some mob boss put a “hit” out on me? 

Just what the hell was I getting into here?

I was right behind the red compact, but let my speed drop until half-a-block separated us. I switched on my blinker, intending to give up the chase at the next intersection.

That’s when the box fell off the trunk.

The red compact zipped off. I stopped and retrieved the package; it was sealed with packing tape. It wasn’t heavy enough to be filled with hundred dollar bills. Or Bolivian cocaine. Priceless heirlooms, maybe, but since I don’t know a “fence,” or even the owner of a disreputable pawn shop, I would not be tempted to steal them.

There were no markings on the package, no address, phone number … nothing. By the time I climbed back behind the wheel, the red compact was long gone. I continued along Plainfield Avenue for a few blocks, hoping to spot the car, but had no luck.

In the mall parking lot, I debated for a few seconds over whether to open the box. There might be something inside, I reasoned, that would point me to its legitimate owner. (Of course, the possibility of hundred dollar bills had not entirely left my mind at this point, either.)

I cut the tape and carefully peeled back the top of the box.

Hamster food. Four bags of hamster food. I had spent the last 20 minutes trying to save a lady — a lady who flipped me off, by the way — from losing her hamster food.

Time for that martini. Shaken, stirred, I don’t care.

Mike Taylor’s book, “Looking at the Pint Half Full” is available at Robbins Book List in Greenville and in Kindle format from Amazon.com.