Apparently, I started Early

I remember the first time I got a real Halloween costume.

The kind that came in a box.

With the plastic mask and the little elastic strap that never fit quite right.

It wasn’t homemade.

It wasn’t thrown together.

It was official.

And I thought it was magic.

You put it on, and for a little while, you got to be something else.

Not pretend.

It felt real.

And that year…

I chose to be a fortune teller.

Apparently, I started early.

I had no idea what I was doing.

I just knew it felt right.

The scarf.

The mystery.

The idea that you could see something other people couldn’t.

When you’re a kid, you don’t question things like that.

You don’t analyze them.

You just step into them.

And for one night, it feels completely natural.

But Halloween wasn’t my only venture into the fortune-telling business.

When I was about ten, we had a neighborhood talent show.

And apparently, while the other kids were singing, dancing, or doing whatever normal ten-year-olds did…

I was a fortune teller.

At the time, I didn’t think there was anything particularly significant about it.

It was a character.

Something I could step into.

Years later, of course, that “character” became part of my actual life.

Looking back, I have to laugh.

It’s probably a good thing I eventually discovered J. B. Rhine and started looking at psychic phenomena through a more serious lens.

Otherwise, who knows?

I might have ended up telling fortunes from the back of a Volkswagen bus somewhere.

And honestly, there are worse career paths. 😏

But when I think about that little girl now—the scarf, the mystery, the absolute certainty that being a fortune teller was a perfectly reasonable thing to do—I sometimes wonder:

Was I reenacting a past life…

or stepping into a future one?

Or maybe…

I already knew more than I realized.