[UA] Would you like gas with those fries?

[Timothy Toner]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Patrick Joynt" <deadairis at hotmail.com>
To: <ua at lists.uchicago.edu>
Sent: Friday, April 13, 2001 9:47 AM
Subject: Re: [UA] Would you like gas with those fries?


>
> I get utterly worthless flashes of precognition -
> I'll dream something...
> and not remember I dreamed it - usually a scene, a few moments or even
> minutes of time - and then experience, when it happens, a sense of
terrible
> deja vu, as I realize that I had *dreamt* this already.
> So, worthless, because I don't recall them until they're in the midst of
> being.

Oh, but that's when the fun starts!  I too have precognitive flashes, and
was suitably impressed until I read an article by Michael Shermer, where he
pointed out that people do this all the time.  The difference is that you
don't remember the times you were wrong, so it skews perception.  I was a
little humbled by this, and shrugged it off, until almost a year later, when
I was talking to one of my charges (I was an RA in high school).  He was
telling me about something that happened, and that familiar sense of deja vu
started coming out.  I smiled, but this wasn't the sort of story you smiled
in the middle of, so he stopped and asked, "What's so funny?"  And my brain
tickled a little.  This hadn't happened in the deja vu!  He shrugged, and
started talking again, and the weird thing is that my smile somehow set
things off a little, so that the feeling preceded the actions that inspired
it.  I knew what he would say and do before he would say it.  I finished his
sentence.  He looked at me funny again.  I then told him exactly what he'd
say, what I'd say in response, and that a certain door would open, and
another student would walk out, ready to take a shower.  As soon as I said
that, the door opened, and James Chinlund walked out and went to take a
shower.  Alex, the kid I was talking to, asked me if I was okay.  I asked
him what he meant, and he told me that my face was really white.  I had a
little trouble breathing, but I said I was fine, and I would finish talking
to him later.  As he walked away, I felt a shudder (not unlike the one I'd
feel many years later) pass through me, with a sense of dread.  I'd fucked
up.  I'd changed the natural flow of events, and now things that needed to
be said and done were now left unsaid and undone, and reality (or whatever)
was PISSED.  I eventually regained the ability to move, shook off the
feeling, and went back to work.  I've had moments in life when I felt like I
could do it again (the last being at EPCOT, which I visited this summer, and
had never visited before, and knew what would be in a room before we entered
it) but always resisted, mostly because if I'm crazy, which I probably am,
at least I don't have to buy into my own bullshit and make it worse.


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