Psychic Misadventures

Some highlights of my family's group psychic reading held last Monday night:

Sister, in regard to grandparents who died before my siblings and I were born: "What do they say about us?"
Brother, interrupting before psychic can answer: "They're very disappointed in you. Me and Becky are fine, though."

Psychic, holding a picture of our other grandfather: "I'm seeing him surrounded by a ring of fire..."
Me: "Grandpa is Johnny Cash?!?"

Additional Tidbits:
* I am getting married in 2015. It will be a small ceremony. It will probably be held in a VFW hall. [EDITOR'S NOTE: This sounds so tacky that it saddens me.]
* I'm joining the Peace Corps.
* No mention of whether or not I am still gay.

This psychic was a customer at my mom's job who, incidentally, was also the father of a friend of my cousin. A co-worker had invited him to her house to do a reading for some friends, just for kicks, and he had been surprisingly accurate on a few things (except for that minor gay one...), so we thought we'd give it a try, too, again, just for fun.

My mom had informed us that at the end of the session, we could each ask 3 questions. I couldn't think of a single question all day. No, correction: I could think of many questions, but as mentioned in a similar scenario in Eat Pray Love (put your literary objections aside for just a moment), "I was rightly ashamed of myself for these thoughts: who travels all the way around the world to meet an ancient medicine man in Indonesia, only to ask him to intercede in boy troubles?" ["Dear Psychic Man: Will Neil go out with me? Check yes, no, or maybe."] I mentioned this troublesome dilemma to my sister, who wisely replied, "He's not a Balinese medicine man, though. He's just Lisa Altieri's dad."

The only legitimate inquiry I could come up with was, will I ever have kids? As I've written here before, I'm approaching an age at which my fertility will soon be plummeting, and from a practical standpoint, I am in no position to support a child — I'm barely responsible enough to take care of a cat. And so, intellectually, I have come to terms with this. I know I am not ready, and anyway, I am terrified of the idea of childbirth [NOTE TO SELF: NEVER watch Agnes of God and Rosemary's Baby back-to-back ever again.] And, as I frequently remind myself, adoption is always an option. Yet there is still that occasional pang of loss when I spy a chubby, giggling baby on the subway, or when imagining how gorgeous "our" kids would have been if I was married to [insert boy-du-jour here]. It's really the only issue in my life about which I have no real measure of certainty. So at least I had one question.

The psychic arrived at the house, we all settled around the dining room table, and the first thing he said, pointing directly at me before I even asked, was: "You're going to have twin girls."

I don't necessarily believe him, but...wow.