Have I ever told you that I am about 30% psychic?
I would be much better but I really don’t know that I had a premonition until after it happened. It’s a skill I want to hone in but I just haven’t really found a good place to add it to my mile long To Do List. College Education should probably come first…
My favorite example is of the day Shawn nearly severed his toe. This was way, way back before people had cell phones, when I was renting a house with my three best friends.
One of my roommates, Shannon, and I had gone out to dinner while Shawn was at work. We were driving home and I had this horrible feeling that we were going to get hurt really and it was going to be bad. So, I kept telling Shannon that she needed to drive carefully because I didn’t want to get in an accident. Thinking I was just nervous because I am a really bad passenger in a car, she told me we were fine and continued to drive home.
And we were fine. We made it home in one piece, no accidents or even near accidents. But I could not shake this feeling that something bad was going to happen.
We went in the house and started to settle in for the night when Shannon hit the play button on the answering machine. Yeah, I told you this was a long time ago! There was one new message from Shawn.
He had been closing the door on a trailer when a piece of sheet metal came crashing down on his foot, nearly severing his big toe and crushing the one next to it. He told me he would be heading to the ER once the job was done.
Once I finished listening to the message, the feeling was gone. It wasn’t until a few years later that I realized that the feeling of dread was connected to his toe.
Over the years, I have had many more times where I had some type of premonition but didn’t really get it until after it was over.
I travel fairly often. I never start to pack until about the night before I leave. When I am packing I start to get this butterfly feeling in my tummy. Every time I have had a trip cancel at the last minute, I realize the butterflies were never there. And last January, I was supposed to fly to South Florida, work from that office for three days, fly home for one night and then fly to California for vacation. Something like that should really get me stressed but I was so calm that when I got the stomach flu the night before I was leaving for Florida, I was not at all surprised. I rescheduled my trip and went to bed for three days awaking just in time to take our family vacation. I could have saved myself a rebooking fee had I foreseen that one!
My most recent premonition was also a travel related experience. I had gone to Florida for work again. I needed to be home for a personal appointment on Thursday night but I also needed to spend one full day in the office and one full day in a training session. So I planned to fly out on Monday, spend all of Tuesday and Wednesday there and fly home very late on Wednesday night.
I booked three days of morning care for Heidi so Shawn could drop her off at school on his way to work. When I filled out the paper work, I kept thinking, I should book her for Thursday too. Just in case. But since that would have cost me another $15 I opted to just stick to the original three days.
When I set my out of office reply on my email, it said something like “I will respond to my emails when I return” instead of “I will respond to my emails on 12/2, when I return.” At some point I reset my out of office reply to say “I am traveling back to Minneapolis and will respond to emails on my return, which I expect to be about noon central time.”
Why did I say “which I expect”? Why did I come across like I didn’t think I was going to get home?
As we were leaving for the airport, I was checking with other coworkers on their travel plans. Another Minneapolis coworker told me that she flew through the other airport and she would be transferring at ATL at about 8 pm. I told her maybe I would see her there since I am on the 9:45 pm out of ATL.
She said, “We should be gone by then. You are on the last flight out of ATL.”
I knew it right then. I should have returned to my hotel, kept the car another day, and rescheduled my flights because I knew I was not going home.
And guess what! The plane arrives at the gate and I still don’t think I am going home. And I am right.
Mechanical issues. No plane. No butterflies.
I am rebooked on a direct flight the next day. They put me up in a Hyatt, sent a shuttle bus to pick me up, and I returned to the airport the next day with my butterflies.
Tomorrow I will tell you about my extended stay in Fort Lauderdale.
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