That's Vanessa, by the way. And Kevin clowning in the back. They are our favorite two from Abroad China and we all hang out quite a bit. And now, back to our story.
When we last left off, I was jumpy the rest of the day, and had some trouble falling asleep the next couple of nights, as I kept hearing noises but was too scared to open my eyes for fear of coming face to face with a pregnant cat. I mean, it sounds funny to read, but watching Vanessa’s mom tell that story in absolute seriousness, without any smile, and without any intention of purposefully trying to scare us…
Anyway, you can imagine my reaction a few days later when Vanessa invited Tiffany and me to dinner with her mother and her mother’s friend, a fortune teller. “Ah, of course, your mom has a friend that is a fortune teller. Why not?”
I was severely tempted to turn down the invitation, but once again, my stomach betrayed me. I have two major weaknesses. One, is good food, and they were going to an Indonesian restaurant renowned for its sumptuous meals. Two, of course, is free food. Really, it’s a lethal combination for me.
So last Thursday night another large group of us gathered around a very nice, candle-lit table for dinner. While it looked suspiciously like a séance to me, I forgot all about it when the first appetizer arrived. There was Vanessa, Tiffany and me, Vanessa’s sister Andrea and her three friends, Vanessa’s mom, the fortune teller, and the fortune teller’s three friends. The fortune teller’s friends, I was to find out, were sort of a cross between his posse of translators and his cheerleading squad. Actually, I think they were just moochers, tagging along for the free food. And seeing as I was in the same boat, I wasn’t about to complain!
Basically, the flow of dinner consisted of happy chatter on one end of the table and complete attention to the fortune teller on the other. One by one, those who dared took their plates and switched places to sit next to the fortune teller, his friends, and Vanessa’s mom. Some people came back cheerful, others slightly pensive, and some sort of lost in thought, as they replayed their foretold lives in their heads. Apparently, his messages were mostly a collection of vague predilections, the kind you’d expect to hear from your average sidewalk tarot-card shyster. But others were shots in the dark, the sort that left you scratching your head wondering where he came up with this stuff. I suppose, though, that if any of the crazier predictions came true, you’d become a true believer. And after each huge revelation, the fortune teller’s friends would ooh and aah and cover their mouths in dramatic portrayals of shock and disbelief. Then they would all start translating at the same time, maybe a few words from one person, then the next few from another. It reminded me of an improv act at Second City…
By the way, the fortune teller didn’t look anything like what one would expect. Rather, he was just your ordinary overweight, jolly-looking middle-aged Chinese man with a bad haircut and sour body odor. We were hoping for someone who resembled and behaved like the Dalai Lama. But, as Tiffany recalls, he looked more like a plumber.
Tiffany went over before me, and came away entertained, but dissatisfied with his generality. His take on Tiffany was that she has a good life line, she needs to not worry so much, she’s searching for something (which we all took to mean a new job), and that she’d have more than one job, but that it would take her 8-9 months to find one that she liked. Of course, he also told her that she HAD to start wearing earrings or she’d never get another job. He also thought she needed to eat healthier and was lonely at work, both of which were complete misses, since she’s one of the most health conscious eaters I know and her coworkers are the only thing that gets her through the day. Anyway, pretty standard stuff, right?
Well I go over there and he just lays into me like I’m the son of Satan. First off, he says I am very emotional, and have a terrible temper, which I need to try to control. The way he says “control” isn’t too convincing, either, like I’ve got a slim to none chance of ever containing my terrible rage. And his friends all went “oooohhhh!!!” and leaned away as if in fear of my volatile nature. Then he made a comment about my nose and how that indicated that I spend money like it’s water and my financial controls resemble those of an Enron executive. “Mmmm hmmm….” nodded his supporters in vigorous agreement. At that point he leaned back to look at Tiffany and yelled down something in Chinese to the effect of, “You need to control all the money in your relationship! He’ll end up spending it all on lottery tickets!” (Actually it’s true, I happen to like playing the Lotto. Hey, you gotta play to win!)
What else? He also said I’m a reckless driver and that I need to be careful. That was easy enough to take care of, being that I’m in Shanghai and car-less. Finally, he closed on an upbeat note. He said that I’m very arrogant and need to do a lot of charity work in my future. Well, that’s nice, isn’t it? I like doing charity work… And after a finishing round of sympathetic noises from the peanut gallery, I was done.
So it turned out that the fortune teller was less interesting than the conversations we had at the other end of the table about knowing one’s future. Theoretically, the predictions made by a fortune teller should be unavoidable, right? Because if you heard, for instance, that tomorrow you would be bitten by a dog, so you didn’t go out the next day and weren’t bitten, well then, de facto, the fortune teller was wrong and a fraud. Now if you tried to stay indoors all day, but your friend randomly stopped by, and her dog ended up biting you, then you’ve got a fortune teller worth listening to.
We also discussed the merits of knowing one’s unavoidable future, and whether there was even any value in knowing things ahead of time. In the immortal words of Dr. Emmett Brown (aka Christopher Lloyd in “Back to the Future”), “No, [Marty]. We’ve already agreed that having knowledge of the future can be extremely dangerous. Even if your intentions are good, it could backfire drastically. Whatever it is you want to tell me, I’ll find out through the natural course of time.” Which is what I wished I’d said to the fortune teller.
In the end, it wasn’t such a scary night after all, but definitely unique and entertaining. And we are certainly going to miss Vanessa’s mom, who was a riot all on her own, a virtual walking Grimm’s Brothers Fairy Tales, each story told in her distinct accent, a blend of Chinese immigrant and tough, streetwise New Yorker.
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