I have actually done this. This is another New York Story. It was Earth Day in 1990. April 22nd. Oh, it was a fabulous day. A beautiful spring day in the Big City. I wandered around Central Park and Manhattan with my friends. In fact, this photo of the roller skaters was taken on this very day.

The day felt very magical. I remember there being lots of people wandering around Central Park. There may have been something going on (a free concert or something. I can’t quite remember.) There was a powerful, wonderful energy in the air.

We walked by a sign for a psychic/palm reader and decided to to check it out for fun. We walked up to this apartment (which was very weird) and knocked on the door. There was a family of gypsies who lived there. The psychic, a middle aged woman, beckoned me into a back room and instructed me to hold out my palm.

My palm was beset with terrible eczema (I know. Probably TMI but it’s true). The woman tried to read my palm but was so distracted by this that it dominated our conversation. Her advice to me was that I should take “Half a Valium everyday” and that would clear it up. I can’t remember what she said about my future. I do remember that it involved finding the perfect man and marriage and the usual things 19 year old girls think about. The whole thing lasted about fifteen minutes and cost me twenty dollars. I was extraordinarily disappointed. I have never been to a psychic since.