I love your writing - the part about the exit sign made me LOL. Those are the kind of shenanigans signs have us out here doing. I’m a big fan of them, personally. I look for them everywhere. But, I’m exactly like the picture in your post. I get the sign. Sometimes crazy, specific ones. Then, I request a second sign to know that the first one WAS indeed a sign, but then it feels too late. So, they also make me feel guilty for having shunned something I very distinctively requested. Maybe it’s stage fright. Maybe it’s that I don’t want the thrill of the imagination of possibilities to end. Or fail, if I were to ever act on them.
I’m also a fellow, thyroid issue-haver and former mint-green, rabbit’s foot owner. And now having reflected on it more after reading your post, I’m not sure what we all were thinking, but I certainly believed that thing brought me luck, or at the very least, and maybe the most bizarre 🤔, comfort.
When I was in high school (1960s, right?), I had a sorta-kinda crush on a girl whose mother did astrological readings. She had these reference books which were professionally printed and contained pages and pages of charts -- kind of like pie charts? -- and tables of numbers... I'd never seen any books like them except math books with tables of logarithms and trigonometric functions. I couldn't even begin to guess how they were supposed to be used, but used they were -- or "consulted," maybe -- during her "readings."
Anyhow, around then I'd come across something or other about behavioral conditioning: that animals could be trained to behave in certain ways if you repeatedly rewarded them for those behaviors, but ignored others. So when Mrs. X (not her real name) offered to do a reading for me, I thought I'd give behavioral conditioning a try.
The readings consisted of an interview, and every time the, uh, readee answered a question she'd maybe make note and consult one of her books of tables of sines and cosines (or -- ha! -- signs and co-signs). So when she interviewed me, if the question required a simple yes/no answer, I always answered "yes." (That was me, you see, dropping a food pellet in her dish.) If it was more open-ended, I always lied. (Although I did give her my true birth date and place; I didn't want to get tripped up in the lie later, on the off-chance that her daughter and I actually developed a relationship.) The whole Q&A probably took 15-20 minutes, and her follow-up research and final report maybe another 10-15.
And I will say this: the future she laid out for me was fncking AMAZING. None of it actually came to pass, alas. It was only later that I realized that for all I knew, I'd actually just demonstrated the reliability of astrological forecasts: *IF* the answers I'd given had been honest, maybe the predicted future would've been Just Like That.
P.S. I never did get the girl, either. (Maybe her mother'd told her about the redhead my future promised, so she -- ash-blonde as she was -- just didn't want to waste her time.)
This would make a great essay. You lied?! Did you tell her daughter? I wonder if she combined astrology with numerology. I love astrology. I love psychics. But they can’t be charlatans. They have to have the gift. And some do. Thx for sharing. 🥰🙏🏻
I am one of those strange people who receives and sees signs everywhere! 😂 I’ll read into stepping onto a pile of dog duty as a sign that someone untrustworthy is trying to pull a fast one on me. Haha. Serious but not serious if you know what I mean?😉 With that being said, I would love to share with you one of my most BIZARRE signs yet! It was June of 2022 and it was just days before Father’s Day and my husband’s birthday. As well as a week from my own birthday. Father’s Day weekend in my household we usually hosts a big BBQ as we have many June birthdays. This particular day was a Wednesday and I had just came home from grocery shopping. While at the store I had purchased a bunch of corn for dinner that night. Once home I began to shuck the corn. As I was in mid peel of the fifth corn I noticed the corn had a baby corn attached to it. Naturally I grabbed my phone, took a picture of it and sent it to my friends group text chat saying, “which one of you baddies are pregnant? It sure as hell ain’t me!” We all got a good laugh as we began pointing the finger at one another. Fast forward to the morning of the BBQ, I made a quick stop back to the grocery store for some more corn. And guess what? It happened again! Mid way through my fifth piece of corn appeared another baby corn attached! Of course I had to take another picture and share it with my ladies. We were all kind of shocked and praying none of us were pregnant. I was turning 39 with 4 kids. At this stage in my marriage we didn’t even sleep in the same bed most the time. Hubby usually passed out in his Lazy Boy downstairs while I would be meditating high up to the cosmos upstairs. Sure enough when my birthday came the following week the hubby surprised me by sleeping upstairs. And what would you know! I found out in August that I was pregnant with our fifth baby at the ripe old age of 39! 😳 The universe definitely has a funny sense of humor!
Love this. Thx for sharing!! We once got twins egg yokes. We do have adult twins. In retrospect it could have been a sign that we were going to move across country to be closer to our kids. Which we did.
That is so cool! Definitely a sign. Funny story. The day my mom met my now husband she was making him eggs. The first egg she cracked double yoke fell out. My mom looked at me and said, “ be careful you could end up with twins.” Six years later we had twins! Haha!
If the universe has ever left me a sign, I missed it. Like you, I need it on a billboard, in lights, and in words my 8 year old self would understand. (Although I’m not sure anymore what my 8 year old self knew back then. It’s been 60 years and I was a pretty boring child, so I don’t remember).
I remember some old movie that had this take that claimed “sometimes the thing you’re looking for is staring you right in the face”. And whenever I remember that, depending on how I feel that day, I either thinks it’s the biggest load of nonsense or the most profound wisdom. Which is to say, sometimes I see signs, and sometimes I see nothing at all hahaha. :)
Another solid piece, Carissa. I remember the rabbit’s foot in the 1970’s - I think it tasted like chicken. I recently learned about the “6-7” phenomenon, and crafted a piece about it - it reflects how hip we older folks are. . .
6-7 word of the year! Haha. I was referring to every 6-7 in the OT and NT that has a passage about the end of times. Funny how that became bastardized with Alpha Gens.
Coincidences, lucky numbers popping up? Yes. Can I remember any in the moment, no. I wrote a piece about the many signs in Singapore that changed my my life ("Register here for the firewalking"). Someday I'll share.
When I'm writing a novel, I keep a file of all the coincidences I'll come across. It's amazing how many crop up!
For example, in one (abandonned) novel, I randomly picked the name "Gigi" for one of the characters. It was one of those things -- a character popped into my head, but I knew nothing about her. Eventually, when I needed to know about her, I patterned her personality based on a real-life person.
It wasn't until much, much later that I realized the person I was thinking of when developing the character had the initials GG...
Many people would take this as a sign. Maybe it is a sign -- but it's a sign of our own making. We see patterns in otherwise random events, and we believe it's the *universe* showing us what to do. In reality, it's more like a dream: it's our *sub-conscious* telling us what we want and need, in a palatable and puckish way.
First off: Thank you for the Port-a-Potty shout out!
Second: Pay attention! That "B" you got from the psychic obviously means one thing: You are destined to write a Book about Baking for Babies (Born in Bulgaria; or Bimini).
True story: When my mother died last year (the ol' gal was 95), a song kept popping into my head, a rather obscure tune by the pop band America: "Glad to See You." It became an "ear-worm," but one that wasn't annoying.
However: For the next month or so after the funeral, that very song would begin to *randomly* play on my phone, even when I didn't have the music app open; the song would just begin cranking out. Maybe Mom was saying hello from the Great Beyond (??)
Oh, this is brilliant! I don't recall ever having had any signs, but I'm allergic to superstition in all of its forms - the whole 'if [blah] then [blah] will happen' - or indeed '[blah] WON'T happen' - or 'if [blah] doesn't [blah] and instead [blah] does, and it is (or isn't) [blah]day, [blah]day or the weekend' - just doesn't fit with my view of the world. I'm talking about stuff like 'if a black cat crosses my path then....' or the whole Friday 13th thing.
Because frankly, [blah] happens. Or sometimes it doesn't. And if it does or doesn't, then pffffff, [blah] is how it is, and let's just deal with whatever the [blah] actually IS.
A lot of my signs come via music. Messages from mom😇 (song Beautiful in My Eyes), & dad 😇 (The Living Years). Even some of my cats have spoken to me after crossing the rainbow bridge.
But in reading this, I could only think of this for you. So -
When I was younger I lost a doll. Then I dreamt I knew when the doll was! It worked out and I found the doll.
I am trying to get my dreams tell me where my other lost objects are (apple pen) but it doesn’t work.
I don’t know if I see signs but I am struggling with the idea of “gut instincts” and “intuition” versus irrational thought pattern and anxiety. One day I’ll have it all figured out, I’m sure (I think)
I love your writing - the part about the exit sign made me LOL. Those are the kind of shenanigans signs have us out here doing. I’m a big fan of them, personally. I look for them everywhere. But, I’m exactly like the picture in your post. I get the sign. Sometimes crazy, specific ones. Then, I request a second sign to know that the first one WAS indeed a sign, but then it feels too late. So, they also make me feel guilty for having shunned something I very distinctively requested. Maybe it’s stage fright. Maybe it’s that I don’t want the thrill of the imagination of possibilities to end. Or fail, if I were to ever act on them.
I’m also a fellow, thyroid issue-haver and former mint-green, rabbit’s foot owner. And now having reflected on it more after reading your post, I’m not sure what we all were thinking, but I certainly believed that thing brought me luck, or at the very least, and maybe the most bizarre 🤔, comfort.
Thx for reading and commenting! Love that you needed another sign to know if the first sign was for reals. Hehe.
Thyroid! Ugh. It’s another essay.
I would read that! Had to say sayonara to mine, so the meds are new for me, but of course, it’s stubborn & still finding a way to cause issues.
When I was in high school (1960s, right?), I had a sorta-kinda crush on a girl whose mother did astrological readings. She had these reference books which were professionally printed and contained pages and pages of charts -- kind of like pie charts? -- and tables of numbers... I'd never seen any books like them except math books with tables of logarithms and trigonometric functions. I couldn't even begin to guess how they were supposed to be used, but used they were -- or "consulted," maybe -- during her "readings."
Anyhow, around then I'd come across something or other about behavioral conditioning: that animals could be trained to behave in certain ways if you repeatedly rewarded them for those behaviors, but ignored others. So when Mrs. X (not her real name) offered to do a reading for me, I thought I'd give behavioral conditioning a try.
The readings consisted of an interview, and every time the, uh, readee answered a question she'd maybe make note and consult one of her books of tables of sines and cosines (or -- ha! -- signs and co-signs). So when she interviewed me, if the question required a simple yes/no answer, I always answered "yes." (That was me, you see, dropping a food pellet in her dish.) If it was more open-ended, I always lied. (Although I did give her my true birth date and place; I didn't want to get tripped up in the lie later, on the off-chance that her daughter and I actually developed a relationship.) The whole Q&A probably took 15-20 minutes, and her follow-up research and final report maybe another 10-15.
And I will say this: the future she laid out for me was fncking AMAZING. None of it actually came to pass, alas. It was only later that I realized that for all I knew, I'd actually just demonstrated the reliability of astrological forecasts: *IF* the answers I'd given had been honest, maybe the predicted future would've been Just Like That.
P.S. I never did get the girl, either. (Maybe her mother'd told her about the redhead my future promised, so she -- ash-blonde as she was -- just didn't want to waste her time.)
This would make a great essay. You lied?! Did you tell her daughter? I wonder if she combined astrology with numerology. I love astrology. I love psychics. But they can’t be charlatans. They have to have the gift. And some do. Thx for sharing. 🥰🙏🏻
*shamefaced* Yes, I lied, and no, I never told her daughter. (I was just a teenage smartass.)
Haha. It would have been hilarious had the astrologer knew you were lying and called you on it. Now that’s talent. Hehe.
I am one of those strange people who receives and sees signs everywhere! 😂 I’ll read into stepping onto a pile of dog duty as a sign that someone untrustworthy is trying to pull a fast one on me. Haha. Serious but not serious if you know what I mean?😉 With that being said, I would love to share with you one of my most BIZARRE signs yet! It was June of 2022 and it was just days before Father’s Day and my husband’s birthday. As well as a week from my own birthday. Father’s Day weekend in my household we usually hosts a big BBQ as we have many June birthdays. This particular day was a Wednesday and I had just came home from grocery shopping. While at the store I had purchased a bunch of corn for dinner that night. Once home I began to shuck the corn. As I was in mid peel of the fifth corn I noticed the corn had a baby corn attached to it. Naturally I grabbed my phone, took a picture of it and sent it to my friends group text chat saying, “which one of you baddies are pregnant? It sure as hell ain’t me!” We all got a good laugh as we began pointing the finger at one another. Fast forward to the morning of the BBQ, I made a quick stop back to the grocery store for some more corn. And guess what? It happened again! Mid way through my fifth piece of corn appeared another baby corn attached! Of course I had to take another picture and share it with my ladies. We were all kind of shocked and praying none of us were pregnant. I was turning 39 with 4 kids. At this stage in my marriage we didn’t even sleep in the same bed most the time. Hubby usually passed out in his Lazy Boy downstairs while I would be meditating high up to the cosmos upstairs. Sure enough when my birthday came the following week the hubby surprised me by sleeping upstairs. And what would you know! I found out in August that I was pregnant with our fifth baby at the ripe old age of 39! 😳 The universe definitely has a funny sense of humor!
Love this. Thx for sharing!! We once got twins egg yokes. We do have adult twins. In retrospect it could have been a sign that we were going to move across country to be closer to our kids. Which we did.
That is so cool! Definitely a sign. Funny story. The day my mom met my now husband she was making him eggs. The first egg she cracked double yoke fell out. My mom looked at me and said, “ be careful you could end up with twins.” Six years later we had twins! Haha!
Haha!! Awesome story!
Thank you 😊
If the universe has ever left me a sign, I missed it. Like you, I need it on a billboard, in lights, and in words my 8 year old self would understand. (Although I’m not sure anymore what my 8 year old self knew back then. It’s been 60 years and I was a pretty boring child, so I don’t remember).
Haha. Great point! 8yo me was still figuring out cursive.
Humorous as always!
I remember some old movie that had this take that claimed “sometimes the thing you’re looking for is staring you right in the face”. And whenever I remember that, depending on how I feel that day, I either thinks it’s the biggest load of nonsense or the most profound wisdom. Which is to say, sometimes I see signs, and sometimes I see nothing at all hahaha. :)
Agree! It’s all perspective and mood.
For sure :)
I have not gotten any signs or the like. I hoped for them, but alas, maybe I was too freaked out to notice them!
Or you need a billboard like me.
Another solid piece, Carissa. I remember the rabbit’s foot in the 1970’s - I think it tasted like chicken. I recently learned about the “6-7” phenomenon, and crafted a piece about it - it reflects how hip we older folks are. . .
https://ruleofthree.substack.com/p/6-7-six-seven
6-7 word of the year! Haha. I was referring to every 6-7 in the OT and NT that has a passage about the end of times. Funny how that became bastardized with Alpha Gens.
I think what we’re seeing from these Gen Alphas is signaling the end of times.
I was born late and on my dad’s bday.
Not sure if that was a sign for anything but it is the reason I got stuck with this stupid name 🤣
I wake up at 6:36am. I’m pretty sure it’s a sign that I get up too damned early.
Coincidences, lucky numbers popping up? Yes. Can I remember any in the moment, no. I wrote a piece about the many signs in Singapore that changed my my life ("Register here for the firewalking"). Someday I'll share.
And I really enjoyed this, CK!
When I'm writing a novel, I keep a file of all the coincidences I'll come across. It's amazing how many crop up!
For example, in one (abandonned) novel, I randomly picked the name "Gigi" for one of the characters. It was one of those things -- a character popped into my head, but I knew nothing about her. Eventually, when I needed to know about her, I patterned her personality based on a real-life person.
It wasn't until much, much later that I realized the person I was thinking of when developing the character had the initials GG...
Many people would take this as a sign. Maybe it is a sign -- but it's a sign of our own making. We see patterns in otherwise random events, and we believe it's the *universe* showing us what to do. In reality, it's more like a dream: it's our *sub-conscious* telling us what we want and need, in a palatable and puckish way.
Love this. It’s a sign if you think it is! Thx for sharing. 🙏🏻
First off: Thank you for the Port-a-Potty shout out!
Second: Pay attention! That "B" you got from the psychic obviously means one thing: You are destined to write a Book about Baking for Babies (Born in Bulgaria; or Bimini).
True story: When my mother died last year (the ol' gal was 95), a song kept popping into my head, a rather obscure tune by the pop band America: "Glad to See You." It became an "ear-worm," but one that wasn't annoying.
However: For the next month or so after the funeral, that very song would begin to *randomly* play on my phone, even when I didn't have the music app open; the song would just begin cranking out. Maybe Mom was saying hello from the Great Beyond (??)
Yes! That was mama. Sweet. May her memory be a blessing.
Oh, this is brilliant! I don't recall ever having had any signs, but I'm allergic to superstition in all of its forms - the whole 'if [blah] then [blah] will happen' - or indeed '[blah] WON'T happen' - or 'if [blah] doesn't [blah] and instead [blah] does, and it is (or isn't) [blah]day, [blah]day or the weekend' - just doesn't fit with my view of the world. I'm talking about stuff like 'if a black cat crosses my path then....' or the whole Friday 13th thing.
Because frankly, [blah] happens. Or sometimes it doesn't. And if it does or doesn't, then pffffff, [blah] is how it is, and let's just deal with whatever the [blah] actually IS.
LOVED this post, Carissa!
Thx, Rebecca! I agree with you regarding old wives tales. I have no plans to walk under a ladder tho. 😉
A lot of my signs come via music. Messages from mom😇 (song Beautiful in My Eyes), & dad 😇 (The Living Years). Even some of my cats have spoken to me after crossing the rainbow bridge.
But in reading this, I could only think of this for you. So -
https://media.tenor.com/35dzd_ZMxCAAAAAM/heres-your-sign-bill-engvall.gif
Songs definitely invoke memories. I love that you felt your parents during certain tunes. Love the gif. 👏
When I was younger I lost a doll. Then I dreamt I knew when the doll was! It worked out and I found the doll.
I am trying to get my dreams tell me where my other lost objects are (apple pen) but it doesn’t work.
I don’t know if I see signs but I am struggling with the idea of “gut instincts” and “intuition” versus irrational thought pattern and anxiety. One day I’ll have it all figured out, I’m sure (I think)
The doll! That’s amazing. The gut and intuition minus a perceived anxiety works!
Ahh...the miracles of the men in our lives doing things without being told! Loved this. xx
Thx, Lisa. 🙏🏻