Happiness is just one life-altering belief-switcheroo away

As a salesman, I don’t have beliefs of my own. I don’t let something as silly as beliefs get in the way of my production. When I’m on the clock, I believe whatever my clients believe in. And I’m always on the clock.

When they ask me, “What do you think of garden gnomes?”
I respond, “Well if they are confined to the garden, they shouldn’t be deported.”

When they ask me, “What do you think of the tooth fairy?”
I respond, “She better have her green card in order, or she should be on Megan’s list.”

When they ask me, “What’s your position on cheese?”
I respond, “I can take or leave it. What’s YOUR position on cheese?”

When they unveil their approval, I respond, “Oh, you love it? Me too! I only told you that I could take it or leave it because, you know, cancel culture. You can never be too careful. But I love it, too. My house is made out of aged Gouda, my bed out of Manchego. My pillow is filled with cottage cheese — it is better than feather quills, and you wake up, and breakfast is ready. Voilà”

If, on the contrary, when they unveil their disapproval, I respond, “Oh, you hate it? Me too! I only told you that I could take it or leave it because, you know, cancel culture. You can never be too careful. But I hate it, too. Leave it to disgusting humans to go around feeling up the udders of other species, then squeezing them and suckling what comes out of them. Ewwww! Gross! J’accuse!”

As you can see, I’m very flexible with my beliefs, which makes people feel comfortable telling me theirs.

But when people host séances, I don’t get invited to them because they think I don’t believe in them just because I don’t believe in the supernatural. And I don’t.

But just because I’m skeptical doesn’t mean I don’t like a good show.

This feels very discriminatory. I am just your friendly, skeptical family member and friend. Why would I ruin your séance? Remember, I never bring up the inconsistencies of the afterlife at family reunions, especially not at Thanksgiving, because honestly, who cares? I’m just trying to eat my weight in sweet potato pie and avoid religion talk like Corona — only performatively.

Both of my parents are superstitious people. They both believe in the afterworld and the supernatural.

My dad is a devout evangelical Christian who abandoned a career as an architect to become a pastor. At our wedding, he stood in the back and filmed our ceremony while he exorcised our Celtic handfasting. Talk about love, approval, and multitasking.

I’m sure he didn’t appreciate my wife, who was not a god-fearing woman. I assume that because he told me. She still isn’t. But I’m okay with that because he didn’t teach me how to play guitar, and he wasn’t around when I was growing up.

My mom is a one-Sunday-a-year-sometimes Catholic who likes a good ‘mal de ojo’ (evil eye) theory, burning sage to cleanse auras, burying saints figurines in her yard, and putting at the top of her refrigerator a dozen limes carefully placed on a bed of uncooked rice so they capture all evil spells sent to harm her.

More than once, my mom has victoriously shown me all the spells the limes have caught after they have been on the fridge for more than a year. “They are just rotten limes, mom. Unless the curse they are sending you is staphylococcus.”

When I was in my teens, I got my fortune read at a fair, and the psychic told me I would be in a car accident and the car’s color would be red. I don’t believe in the supernatural, but I also don’t temp it in case the supernatural believes in me. So I don’t ever get in red cars.

I’ve done an excellent job avoiding getting on red cars to this day. When my Honda dealership gave me a Burgundy Buick while servicing my Civic, I reassured my subconscious, “Relax; subconscious, Burgundy is not really red.”

I made it home and did not leave my house for three days until it was time to pick up my white car. Even then, I let my wife drive as I sat on the co-pilot’s seat. No one has forecasted her horrible death in a red car.

I was outfoxing my destiny.

I’m clever like that.

Mediums and psychics are playing the law of averages. These guys are not mediums. They are actuaries with good communication skills, which is still very rare. It is not a supernatural event. But if you’ve ever met an actuary, you know it is rare.

This particular medium also said I would have problems with my bladder; I blame her for instilling a self-fulling prophecy in my head. Now, I have an overactive bladder, and I always have to pee. Or it could be that I may be drinking way too much water. I guess there is no way to know.

My mom took me to a famous astrologer in San Diego. She offered to pay for my reading. I love readings. I don’t believe in them. I don’t pay for them. But I take them when people offer to pay for them. So, I happily went to meet this astrologer.

The astrologist began performing his act after we provided him with perfunctory details like my birthdate, my favorite color, the exact time my mom started crowning, whether or not she needed an episiotomy to deliver my giant head — head that was diagnosed as suffering hydrocephalus or having water in it. Later, we found out that I just had a giant head. A syndrome that has followed me for the rest of my life — physically, metaphorically, and metaphysically.

He spent a lot of time talking about my loveless life. How did he know?

After five minutes of following this line, my mom couldn’t take it anymore, so she burst out, “He is happily married.”

At the time of the reading, I was commuting between San Diego and San Francisco, and on the very first day I started that commute, I lost my watch and my wedding ring going through a TSA line. I had still not replaced the ring when I met him, and that’s what he based his reading on.

The astrologer corrected the course by saying my wife and I were in a rocky patch. He never recovered. He didn’t get anything right, not even generic details about my personality.

We walked out of there, and my mom and I had gone to two different readings. She thought he got me right on the money; I couldn’t think of one thing he got lucky on.

I still called my wife and asked her if there was trouble in paradise. I wanted to give her a platform to express her dissatisfaction with our relationship — a dissatisfaction I wasn’t aware of. She assured me we were on solid ground.

That was eleven years ago, and we are still happily married. I think. I haven’t consulted an astrologer to find out. I guess I could ask my wife but ain’t nobody got time for that.

But I’m ready to give up on the belief that the supernatural doesn’t exist. Why let something silly as beliefs get in the way of eternal bliss? I’m just going to change my mind. I do it with everything else.