I’ll make Paris Blue a reality one of these days, Shirley thought. It’s just a matter of getting organized. But many drunken nights passed and she never could think of how to get the idea off the ground.
Shirley’s fifth idea was to become a psychic. She would start a business where people would come to her so she could interpret their dreams and tell them about their future.
Shirley had never gone to a psychic although she was curious about it. There’s never enough time she thought, I barely have time to buy groceries. But Shirley never went food shopping, her refrigerator was usually empty. Shirley remembered how a few people once told her that she had a knack for interpreting dreams, but that was over 30 years ago when she was living in a commune with a group of new-age hippies on an abandoned farm in Indiana. They had planned on raising crops and living off the land, but none of them had any knowledge of farming, so they worked odd jobs at neighboring towns and at night they spent hours getting stoned. At that time, Shirley was living with her boyfriend on the farm.
As they all sat around getting high, they would tell Shirley about their dreams and she would try to interpret them. She said anything that came to her drugged-out state and it always sounded good to them. She became the designated interpreter of dreams on the farm. Years later, no matter how hard she tried, she just couldn’t remember all those dreams they use to tell her. All that she could remember was the compliments she received when she gave an interpretation.
Also back in those days, a girl named Joy, who also lived on the farm, once said to her, “Shirley, you always know what I’m thinking you must be psychic.” Joy made this remark because twice in one week Shirley asked her if she was hungry and Joy in her state of being stoned was amazed that Shirley had somehow known that both times she was indeed hungry. Joy was convinced that Shirley could read her mind and told the others on the farm about it. They were in even higher awe of Shirley’s psychic abilities.