My Lucky Flight to Italy in 1975

I flew Alitalia in 1975 because my flight attendant discount ticket cost $69 round trip. My seat was over the wing in the middle of the center aisle. I barely noticed the older man and woman who sat on either side of me.

Two hours over the Atlantic Ocean, I looked across the plane to the left and out the window. Flames shot from the engine. I worked for United, so I wanted to run and tell the pilots, but I wasn't working the flight and I didn't know the Italian words for fire and engine. We dropped altitude and the flames ceased. The plane banked hard to the left and the pilot made a long announcement in Italian. In English, he said we were headed back to New York City.

Passengers gasped and went silent. In time, conversation erupted. I started to write a goodbye letter to my family but realized if I died so would my note. I remembered the time I took a break in the cockpit and asked the captain about engines.

"If there are four engines and one gives out, can the plane fly?" I asked.

"Oh sure," he said. "You just have to keep an eye on your instruments."

"What if two engines fail?"
"Hairy," he told me, with a drop in his perky tone.

"And three gone?" Silence. His thumb made a downward turn.

Surrounded by Italians who spoke no English, my knowledge barely helped my despair. I observed how other passengers coped. The wild eyed woman to my left clutched her rosary. The row of women in front of me wailed. Suddenly one of the women leaned over her seat and waved her arms at me, then pointed to the man on my right. Smiling and calm, he nodded beatifically. Boom went the light bulb in my head. My seatmate was a Catholic priest. I felt lucky. I liked priests. Every one of them I have met has been positive and accepting of my psychic abilities.

Two hours of ocean gave way to asphalt. We waited a few hours and 2/3 of us boarded again. I stretched out on the empty seats to my left and fell asleep.

My Third Psychic Memory

I am maybe five or six. I must have been in kindergarten, since I have a real sense of myself. Every weekend I beg my mother to let me go alone into the front yard, which borders a boulevard with rushing cars. I have to go without her, since she likes the back yard with its privacy and noisy birds and a line to hang wash. Her front porch visits are limited to a sweep and a wash.

I keep asking to go out front alone. When she finally lets me, I hide behind our big old elm tree with my back against the rough bark. I think about two of our three neighbors, the ones my mom calls widows. I don’t know what that means, but I want to see what they do in their homes, so I stare through the tree and into their lives. One lady slouches in a chair to read and the other one is busy in her kitchen. They are boring to watch.

The house right next to ours is different. Inside lives one crazy family, and their intrigue and my shock equals fun. I stare into their house and watch the mother pace back and forth from the kitchen to the living room. The drama begins as she throws her arms in the air and runs to the bottom of the stairs, where she yells at the husband and children who are hiding upstairs. When she exhausts herself, she throws her body on the stairs and breaks out in a sob. In the yard, through the tree, I see her but I cannot hear every word.

After her final outburst, the husband storms down the stairs and bawls out his anger and
frustration. He stops to check on her as she lies prostate, then he stomps through the house and out to the garage. If he is only a little angry, he sits in his car inside the garage with the garage door open. When he gets really mad he drives off and doesn't return for the rest of the day.

Their ritual stays the same every weekend. The kids hide in their rooms, the parents fight. Their passion and pathos enthrall me. These are the days before we had a television, so their antics provide me with my own personal soap opera. As far as seeing through walls, I assume everyone has my abilities. I figure it’s like underwear, private. I certainly do not talk about it.

In second grade I make a new friend, a tow-headed tomboy. To impress her I take her to my secret spot behind the tree. I tell her about my fun as I watch the neighbors act crazy. She stands behind the tree with her back straight against it. Time passes.

“This isn’t working. I have to face the tree to look through it,” she tells me, as irritation creeps into her voice.

Silent as stone, she waits with her nose pressed against the bark. Within minutes she gives up.

"What are you STUPID?” she screams at me. “People can't see through walls!"

Our friendship collapses as she marches off for home.