Strange thing happened on the way to the blog. When I went to save what I had written, every word disappeared into cyberspace. I was much too tired to recreate it, soooooooo, my usual blog will continue tomorrow. Today, you just get -- well, me.
Do you have any sense at all?
Sometimes I have to wonder -- about myself, at least. I think we all do.
You know that old saying about how if you lose one sense, another one will be accentuated, such as blind people and sense of touch, etc.? It's so true. I'm living proof. I'm missing one sense -- okay, if we count my common sense and my sense of propriety, that makes three. But I am missing my sense of smell.
To answer all the common questions immediately, yes, I can taste. Would I be into chocolate if I couldn't? No, I've never smelled coffee, chocolate chip cookies or flowers. The reason I note that specifically is for some strange reason, when I tell people I can't smell, everybody always asks those exact questions. I've even had people come up and stick things under my nose and say, "Here, try REALLY hard." Obviously, that's just REALLY stupid.
Want to hear something funny? Not only have I never been able to smell, but as a child, I was so egocentric, I didn't figure it out until I was about 11 or 12. Yes, I thought everybody else in the world was making a huge deal about nothing. I mean, after all, everything smelled EXACTLY THE SAME. There couldn't possibly be anything wrong with me. What was their deal?
You don't have to ask a psychic to figure out what my sense of smell was replaced with. I just happened to be blessed with this little talent that allowed me to know what was going on with people, what was their motivation, when they were lying and what was going to happen - oh, and the dead people that seemed to hang around and want to chat.
I don't know if my psychic abilities had anything to do with it, but my mother used to say that I paid absolutely no attention to how old a person was. Bad Laurie. Think about it, no respect for my elders. An idiot was an idiot. Growing up psychic can be a little bit different. I grew up convinced adults were stupid, and I might have had a point there. Didn't they know that person was a liar, or that one over there was nothing but a phony?
When I got to the age of majority, I decided to become a court reporter. Except I knew what people were going to say before they said it. Okay, not entire sentences, but I would start writing down the sentence before they started it. Everything was fine before real-time came into play.
Real-time is a program that allows the judges and attorneys to hook their computers up to the reporter and see the testimony on their computer as it's spoken. You may have seen it if you watched the OJ trial. Once real-time started, I had a problem, because it turned out it's not acceptable to write down what a person is going to say before they say it.
I had to learn to hang back and feign innocence when the attorneys would look quizzically at the screen and me. It also got to a point that more and more of my attorney clients would hang around after a deposition as I was packing up my equipment to leave to say, "So what do you think?" and ask my opinion of the witness or their case.
To be a court reporter, you have to write over 200 words per minute on your little machine. Obviously, you have to go on automatic pilot and let the words simply flow through you. You stop and think, you lose your place and lose words. Sometimes you aren't even hearing what's being said, your mind is elsewhere, and yet, it's there. Some cases or witnesses are so difficult that you have to hang on their every syllable, and yet others would send me sailing off into alpha state.
This can be a bit of a problem, because when a medium is in alpha state, this is where intuitive messages or even spirits who have passed over come in for a chat. Of course, being woman (hear me roar), I'm good at multi-tasking, but this was too much and I was continually having to mentally protect myself and say, "Go away. We'll talk later."
Another talent that came along with my abilities and being able to know what people were talking about before they said it, I could understand any accent. I would get sent to cases where nobody knew what the witness was saying, and in fact, frequently, I'd have to read back the answer given because nobody else in the room understood what was said.
I also used to have a boyfriend that could speak a number of languages. I remember one night we were at dinner, and he began speaking to a compatriot he met in Portuguese. Of course I couldn't understand every word that was said, but I was keeping right up with it and adding to the conversation in English. The man would then turn to speak to me, and I kept protesting, "No, no, I don't understand." My boyfriend later told me they were lapsing between Portuguese and Spanish and kept asking me how I did that.
Naturally, after I reached adulthood, I realized that not everyone could do what I did, and everybody wasn't just playing dumb, they really were! Okay, I'm kidding, but growing up psychic is, shall we say, different. At first I thought something was wrong with everybody else, and then as I grew, I realized there was something not wrong, but different, with me.
Although these abilities are hereditary, nobody in my family had developed their skills to this level and it was kept more under wraps. Eventually, of course, I began to work part-time doing psychic readings, and then finally, a few years ago when I developed carpal tunnel syndrome, I quit court reporting and began to do readings full time.
It truly is wonderful to be able to work in a manner in which I can help others. I learn just as much from all of my clients as they do from me. It is so rewarding to be able to work in an environment now where my gifts are accepted and honored and not just an anomaly, a place where I truly "fit," and a place where my lack of sense makes perfect sense.