Saturday, February 4, 2012

SUPERBOWL PSYCHIC PERFORMANCE ANXIETY

Four years ago, at 4 minutes to nine on the Saturday night before the Superbowl, I sent out an email to 19 people, predicting the exact score and winning team of the game to be played the next day.

The email is actually date and time stamped with California time-- 6:58PM February 2, 2008-- as my sbcglobal.net email address was through a guy I'd been living with before coming back to St. Louis. I no longer have access to the email address-- in fact, I think the account itself is now gone.  And SBC Global has not been at all helpful in giving me any verification for it.

Of the 19 people that received, roughly 8 did not even read it before deleting it, seeing it as another of the rambling prediction emails I'd been sending out that year.  Several more I am not even on speaking terms with anymore. 

There are five people on the list that received it, read it before the game, and will, if asked, verify that it was sent before the game and that the prediction stunned them.  All will also add that I have not been able to reproduce those results since then.  (You can view the contents of the email here, although I have erased the header and recipient info.)

One of the people that received the email (but has never responded to any of my emails about it) has every right to think I am "voices in the head" schizoid that needs to be heavily medicated and locked up.  Hearing the thoughts of other people is very rarely the gift the non-psychic thinks it is.  When I am wrong, I am horribly, irrevocably wrong.  And often I have to make the choice between living with being wrong, or being tortured by not knowing whether I am hallucinating or not.  (And usually, I am right, but as I said, when I am wrong, I am horribly wrong.)

Choosing to confront someone based on "the voices in my head" is always risky business.  And even when I am trying to do the right thing, it can have a terrible outcome.

This year, I was that crazy person.  Or perhaps that unsung heroine.  Who will ever know?  Not even me.

So, when a few months ago it came to me that this would be another year when the possibility of predicting the Superbowl was an option, I was elated.  Finally, a chance to redeem myself.  This time, I could post on facebook, which has an unalterable time stamp (unlike a blog), and which anyone can see (unlike an email).

All those people that think I am a big liar, or crazy, or delusional, well, finally I could prove it to them once and for all that I am at least sometimes right.  And right in a way that few people ever are.  Even if the score wasn't going to be as insane as that 17-14 score in 2008.  (I rarely watch the game at Superbowl parties, preferring the jello shots and commercials and halftime show, but that year I watched and I kept asking "is this a good game?" I know so little about American football.)

So, it did seem strange to me, that it is the same two teams.  And I have that feeling again.  That "you can do it" feeling. But I am sitting here, having some sort of crisis of faith.  

Or maybe I just don't give a fuck anymore.  I am not betting. I won't be getting any money from my prediction.  Any fame that comes from it will just be annoying and disrupt my hermit-like existence.  There seems to be only two reasons I am interested in doing it again: to confound the non-believing muggles, and to redeem myself for the terrible psychic "wrongs" I committed this year.

I'm giving myself until 5:15 PM CST tomorrow.  I will be posting on my facebook Lady Rae page.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/LADY-RAE/151678961529234?sk=wall

Will I be right? Will I care? No one knows. Not even me. 


EDIT:  The post on Facebook.  Don't know why the fonts are all crazy.
When I did this in 2008 the score was the same for the whole two weeks after the final playoffs, until that very night I was sending it out. In no year since then has the score been consistent. Even this afternoon I was getting so many numbers, but today they have all been in a range of two or three points. SO:
Patriots 26 to Giants 15... (The Patriots had a range of 25-27 when I looked each time, and the Giants I have seen 14-25, although generally 14 or 15. I felt very uncertain about that 14 because that was Patriots score in 2008. I really feel like my worth as a psychic is riding on this, so I waited til kick off.)
· · · 5 February at 17:36


  • 2 people like this.

    • LADY RAE
      Okay, well, I think 2008 was just one of those things that was pretty well set in stone. Every year since then, even this one, it was not a consistent set of numbers. I will say this, until the second half of the third quarter everything happened as I'd seen it. The only thing that I wondered about was, I did not see the Patriots going from 17 to 26 with three field goals, it was another touch down and then something else, and when they didin't make the touchdown I wondered about that 26 score-- had I seen something wrong? What is two points? I don't know enough about football. Anyhow, I was hoping this would redeem me, now I think, well, maybe I don't need to be redeemed. I am a psychic, I do make mistakes, oh well. And predicting the future is tricky, as Yoda said "future always in motion" especially during professional sports.

      5 February at 22:19 ·

2 comments:

  1. barbara and I both got the email, read it and remember it..was freaked out..you did good..ha..waiting for your prediction this year.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Well, I posted it on the Facebook page, but-- as I am about to add here-- I think 2008 was just a really set year. I have not had the same experience again.

    ReplyDelete