The Good, Bad, & the Ugly

I watch a lot of detective shows that sometimes remind me about my experiences in that field. From age 40-55, from 1991 until 2007, I worked almost daily, pro bono as a psychic on murder cases. A few times, I helped find a killer. The work often made me sick and upset, as I expect it does for other police officers. My joy came from leading a detective down a path of thinking that he hadn’t pursued.

Except for one female detective, they were all males. The camaraderie between them was more profound than is shown in movies. Like many jobs, they had an almost secret language of looks and words. The best part was that I was treated like an equal part of a team. No job prior to that felt the same. As a teacher, I never found that other teachers banded together as a whole. Instead, it sometimes felt like little middle school cliques.

The worst part was when detectives would insist that I look at murder victim pictures. I tried to avoid it, but some guys were tricky and thrust them in front of me. I’ll never forget those haunting scenes. At the time, my psychic mind was more concerned with what happened and not the finality of it.

Right before I cut way back in this work, I starred in a half hour show, Psychic Witness, which played on the ID channel all over the world and on Netflix for a year, and made me mini-famous. Reliving the murder during the four days of shooting the show felt beyond horrible, since I had seen it in my mind’s eye the first time. The capper came when the man playing the murderer asked me the killer’s motivation and I had to explain it to him, all the while wishing I could have prevented it.

I made a decision to not be famous. During that mini-famous time, my thoughts were so jumbled. People wanted to be my friend and it wasn’t about me. Others stared at me in stores. I didn’t want to leave my young son and spend my life on the road as a psychic. I’m a teacher, writer, and musician and I didn’t want to be pigeonholed as just a psychic. I think about this decision often, with some pathos but little regret.

My respect is huge for everyone in law enforcement. It’s a difficult and dangerous job for low pay. My heart goes out to every single one of them.

Loss & Gain

I started life as an athlete. By age eight, I gleefully ran the four safe blocks that my mother mapped out. The next year, I rode my bike. By sixth grade I was the fastest runner in my elementary school and one afternoon, I rode forty-two miles and wasn’t even winded. I excelled as a fast and furious basketball guard, but quit because of the rule that I had to stop at half court and watch my target make baskets. For fun, I practiced the long and the high jumps, but our school had no girls track team. Fie on that, since my conservative parents refused to get a lawyer to try to put me on the boys’ team.

In seventh grade, I followed my older sister into cheerleading. A quiet child, I discovered all the yelling helped me find my voice. By tenth grade, several grown-ups involved in picking new cheerleaders told my father that I was the best for squad tryouts. Once in my thirties, one of those men even expressed his deep regret over the unfairness of what happened. The girls on the varsity squad convinced the coach to let them help pick the new squad. They outnumbered the adults and didn’t chose me. I’ll never know why, but I think jealousy. I felt devastated and shock, and I cried all night.

Weeks later, I attended the first meeting for the school musical. The director boomed out, any people in sports, leave now, cheerleaders leave now. Destiny had paid me a visit. In my junior and senior years I had the lead in the musicals and senior play, and to this day, I’m a performer. I thank my lucky stars that those girls ruined what I thought was my future path. Although I don’t know any adult cheerleaders.

Horrible things happen, and then wonderful things happen, and we are forced to follow newly opened paths. In the midst of horrible it’s hard to hope for wonderful, but it comes.