Like I Was Saying...
Crazy story.
Back when I was eight, I got this wart in the center of my palm. I don’t know how I got it, it just started developing. Now, a couple of blocks from my house was a huge reservoir, so after a healthy rain, my friends and I would bike down there to play with the tadpoles and baby frogs. Maybe that’s how I got it.
Funny, thinking about it now, can you get warts from frogs?
Is this a thing?
I’ll Google it later.
I tolerated the wart for a few years until I went to Arizona to visit my aunt and she took me to a doctor to have it burned off. I was grateful because I’m a picker, and I picked at that damn wart all the time. I know, gross, but I was a kid; we’re all gross at that age. Some of us grow out of it, and some of us don’t.
Once the wart healed I thought nothing of it. Sure, I had a scar, but the scar meshed with other squirrelly lines in my hand.
Then several years later, I’m clubbing in Downtown El Paso with my cousin Joe. And while scoping out the scene - as you do - we see this palm reader set up a little table with a candle on it.
Joe whips his head around, “I’m going to do it; I’m going to get my palm read.”
I tell him palm reading is bull crap and to save his money. Plus, I don’t think we should because that’s just bad juju. And, I vaguely remember from Church that getting your fortune read is a sin.
Still, Joe’s curious. He goes sits down and hands the lady twenty bucks and his palm.
About fifteen minutes later, Joe gets up and is as pale as a ghost, and his eyes have a nice watery gleam to them.
“Dude, that lady knows things she shouldn’t,” he says, whisking away a tear or two.
I’m skeptical. “It’s all an act,” I say. So Joe hands me twenty bucks and says, “here you try.”
I snatch the twenty bucks from his hand. Fine.
The palm reader is a young, pretty brunette girl. I give her my twenty bucks and plop my palm on the table. Okay, let’s do this.
She grabs my hand and feels my hand out with her other hand.
“Someone is watching over you,” she says.
Okay, I say.
“This someone was/is worried about you. Like she wants to keep you safe. I see a seatbelt, and when you think about her, you think of a terrible smell.”
Oh, shit.
Back around the age of eight, I’d flown to LA to pick up my Tia Ramona. She was more of my Mom’s Tia, but I called her Tia too.
See, Tia Ramona had pallet cancer that was eating away at her. The smell was awful. Even months after she passed away, I could smell her in the room where she lived while staying with us.
Now, flying her back from LA, she made a big deal for me to buckle my seatbelt.
I start feeling this pinch in my heart.
But then, this palm reader starts tracking my lifeline on my palm, and she says, “huh, that’s strange.”
Strange?
What’s strange? How could a palm be strange?
“Well,” she says, “you just stop.”
She’s at the scar from my wart.
Stop? Stop what? School? Smoking? Drinking?
“No,” she says, “you just stop and then keep going.”
“Yeah, you’ll live a long life, get married twice, and have two kids,” she says but returns to my scar.
She shakes her head and looks at me, “you just stop,” I don’t know what to tell you.
Freaked out, I bought the next round for Joe and me. Yes, that lady knew more than she should.
Years later, I would get behind the wheel of a jeep drunk off my ass, flip it, and almost kill myself.
I’m told I was technically dead for four minutes. Lucky for me, the paramedics that night felt a faint pulse, enough to get me to rush to the ER.
It took me a long time to admit I was drunk that night. I was ashamed of what I had done to my family and friends. I lied to people, telling them that I didn’t know how to drive a standard and was peeling out to impress some girls in a covetable because girls dig a guy that can peel out. Ah, youth.
I bring this up because I’ve spent most of my Sunday rummaging through my hapless blog with little views sprucing it up.
Since 2018 I’ve started Like I Was Saying five times.
I’ve always been a little embarrassed by the idea of this thing I’ve wanted to do but never had the discipline to keep up.
I think part of moving forward is embracing your failures from the past and owning ‘em.
So I’ve brought all those blogs under one roof with the promise to myself to commit to one blog from now on. And owning the work in it, good or bad.
There’s still a little work to do, but I’ve put a sizable dent into it.
I can’t erase the past, but I know, with discipline, I can make this thing work.
Update: So no, you can’t get warts from Frogs. That’s a myth. It’s come from the HPV virus.
Here’s my question: I got that wart when I was eight. Was I still going to get into that accident and just not know about it, or did something happen to change my destiny at the age of eight that manifested that accident in the future?