Telepathy

I remember standing on the east side of Michigan Avenue, just north of the Chicago River, looking across the street at Margaret as she disappeared into the crowd of the big city. The thought came, “There goes the mother of my children.”

We had met at work, my first 40-hour a week job after high school. I had moved up from chores at the mailroom, euphemistically called the “Communication Center” at the Tribune Company, publishers of the Chicago Tribune –the self proclaimed world’s greatest newspaper to the credit department. She worked there too. But this day was her last. She and her husband were off to California. Margaret had ambition. She wanted to teach school and needed credentials in order to do so. Relocation was part of the plan to acquire the schooling needed.

About a year or so later, she returned from the west coast and to the Tribune Company looking to take up her old job. She was rehired and we began, very slowly, to get to know each other. Little by little, bits and pieces of her story came out. The relationship between her and her then husband was in serious trouble. On campus after campus his psychological state prompted him to do things that were both illegal and embarrassing to him, to Margaret, and to the various school administrations.

She left him and after a divorce our relationship deepened. Eventually she bore two children. Some of the best times she and i had in the course of getting to know each other was to recount to the other details of our pasts. I told her this story. It was a summer Saturday afternoon –a day in my mid teens, spent hanging around the small city park near home. Jake was a connected city worker. His efforts for the machine that ran the big city resulted in his acquiring a job at the park. Unlike professionals in the field any interest he had in organized recreation was secondary. Closer to his heart was gambling. Somehow he had managed to place a bet on a horse that was running at Arlington Park that afternoon. His duties that day were to close the park offices, after which he invited me to drive in his old car out to the track, where he hoped to see his favorite of the day run. After the sixth race the track waived its admission charges, allowing Jake and me free entry. We elbowed our way to the rail not far from the finish line, just in time for him to root for “Stan”, the horse of his choosing –who proved to be an instrument of a dream come true. Stan flashed by us, with Jake whooping and hollering as he came up a winner! Jake and i waited until the race was posted as official, and returned from our outing happily.

I had never before or since been in attendance at a racetrack. In our recall of pasts it came to light that Margaret was there on the same day, never before or since being at a racetrack.

A year or two later about the time of high school graduation, some boys from the school invited me to go with them –a rare occasion because the boys of my technical high school were not from my neighborhood, where i enjoyed an entirely different set of acquaintances. We were off to Navy Pier. In those days it was the home of the University of Illinois in Chicago, not the tourist attraction it is today. Just west of the pier was a gymnasium building. This day it was the site of an exhibition given by traveling Swedish Gymnasts. This was long before young Romanian women at Olympiads raised awareness of the genre.

In our recall of pasts, it came to light that Margaret was there on the same day, never before or since being at an exhibition of traveling Swedish Gymnasts.

Looking back on such things it seemed as if the hand of fate was bringing us together. One summer day, when our boys were old enough to fend for themselves for an afternoon she and i were invited by two friends to picnic in a forest preserve. The four of us piled in to our 1968 Volkswagen Squareback, and with me at the wheel we took off for a day’s adventure. After eating i was introduced to play with a Frisbee. It was good fun. But the real adventure happened on the way home.

This time Margaret took the VW wheel. I sat directly behind her. Our two friends took up seats to the right of each of us. A picture of the route home was clear in my mind. It was less clear in hers. Somehow, perhaps because of the special closeness between us, we entered an altered state of consciousness. Without any effort or surprise, it seemed completely natural to be able to communicate with each other without speaking. What fun! We would come up to an intersection where our route home required a left turn, i would think left, and she would turn left. Sometimes she would cast a quick glance over her shoulder for confirmation of the message sent. Eye to eye contact accomplished this. This transmission business was repeated several times. There was no mistake, no accident about it.

Then in true back seat driver fashion i noticed that the gas gauge needle on the dash of the VW was approaching empty. We needed to refill the gas tank. Up ahead i spotted the sign of a service station for which my pocket held a credit card. So i sent a thought to Margaret, to turn into the gas station and to pull up to a pump. We did so. This was in the days before self-service so in a few moments a uniformed attendant arrived, carrying a towel and wiping grease from his hands.

Leaning down to the drivers window, he asked, “Can I help you?” No one spoke. But i sent him a clear telepathic message, “Fill it up, regular, please.” He evidenced no recognition of this attempt, and repeated saying, “Can I help you?”

Then it dawned on me. Taken up with the telepathy between Margaret and me, i failed to consider that it was not possible to do so with just anyone. His look of perplexity softened, as i slipped out of that altered state, reclaimed voice, and spoke aloud the words, “Fill it up, regular, please.”

Musing over the incident i wondered if such psychic transmissions require a carrier. Maybe it’s akin to radio waves, which are altered by Amplitude Modulation to produce A M signals, or Frequency Modulation to produce F M signals. In this case the carrier being closeness, being affection, or love. If so, i cannot but be in awe of the marvelous mystery that allows us to drop the barriers to our interior space, and let go of our privacy, only to find ourselves protected by the surrender known as love.

Telepathy and Intuition

Transmission puts the
Lie to our foolish notions
Of separation!