Dr. Brady Phelps

I am beginning to think that I really don’t “fit in” or maybe I need to “grow up.” Its not that I can’t conform or won’t behave as a grown up it is just that I do not always do so. You mention “fitting in” or “be a grown up” to me and I get images of the ilk of Republicans like John Ashcroft.

Would you ever really want to know how John Ashcroft has “fun” or “a good time?” I think not.

One activity that still can make me laugh is the crank call. I don’t call the retired people next door or anything like that. I call the people who really deserve the abuse like the telephone psychics, the people who can amazingly reveal our futures, your baby’s paternity (or even its maternity!) and so on.

It’s too bad about Miss Cleo, though. It turns out she wasn’t from Jamaica and she was actually just a little-known actress from California. But I am sure that other “actual psychics” are actually psychics.

For instance I called a local psychic who does the usual fortune telling; I found her especially convincing when she predicted cold weather was approaching (!) and a candidate would win the local senatorial campaign. But she will also do “Letters from Heaven,” which sounded a lot like the schtick that former dance instructor John Edward does on late night TV.

Oddly enough all the messages and letters “from beyond” are always full of reassurances that “I may be dead but I am ok.” Evidently, in Heaven there will be no “Dear John” or “I still hate you and I wish YOU were dead” letters. She assured me she had almost always been able to contact the “other side” and receive good news. Except, she said, for this one mime, whose dead uncle had absolutely nothing to say from beyond.

She saved the best for last ? she was also a ghost buster! The heavily Hungarian gypsy by way of Brooklyn accented voice told me that ghost busting wasn’t easy but she could do it. I asked if she used any hallowed rituals proven to expel evil.

She said she used the rite of walking naked through a “place of visitation” with a smoldering piece of sagebrush and chanting “No sex, no supper, just Tupper, Tupper, Tupper!” Since my mother had dabbled in the black art of Tupperware parties, the hair on the back of my neck stood at attention when I heard the chilling exorcism-Tupperware motivational chant.

Impatiently, I pressed her for details of her ghost busting but she would not reveal any specifics on the phone.

I continued. What would she recommend if I had a poltergeist who made noises just like the sound of my home air conditioning and heating system?

She patiently gave her professional opinion but I could sense somehow that she was a tad peeved. I could almost hear my mother’s voice in her reply. But my mother isn’t even close to death! How could this actual psychic be forming a psychic connection with a genuine undead loved-one type person?

It was too unthinkable that she might actually only be a mother who could use a real annoyed sounding phone voice!

I moved on. What if I had a particularly devilish poltergeist who moved all my things and put them exactly where I had left them? Wouldn’t that demand a full blown exorcism? What if I was haunted by a poltergeist that removed all my personal possessions and replaced them with exact replicas? Now certainly that would whet her appetite for some ectoplasmic ass-kicking, I thought to myself.

I pushed her too far and she hung up. I hope I don’t get sued if and when she reads this column.

But I did make myself laugh, albeit not hysterically.

Dr. Brady Phelps is a professor of psychology. Write to him at [email protected].