Had a feeling that was going to happen. Was it intuition?

I tell people that I have great intuition. I don't tell them that I think I'm psychic, because I don't think that I am. I wouldn't want to be psychic. I had what might be considered a premonition when I was younger. I never want to experience that again. Whatever it was, it was too freaky.

But, I have no problem telling people when I’ve got a feeling about something. Why not? These feelings usually turn out to be pretty right on. Sometimes, when I tell people I think I have great intuition they look at me weird. Fortunately, these reactions are usually from people who I am not close with. The people who know me? They’ve seen one of these “feelings” in action, so they don’t think I’m weird.

What does having good intuition even mean? Well, considering that most people have intuition, but they just don’t listen to it, having good (or great) intuition means that you DO listen to that voice inside—the voice that, while it may not always speak to you in clear sentences, does communicate pretty strong messages if you are paying attention.

My intuition, when it’s good, ranges from sensing the nature of a person's character, like if they have a generally good energy or basically bad energy about them, to getting a more specific sense about something, about a situation, or about a someone. For instance, I almost always know when I am being lied to.

This is probably why I do not lie. (Well, mostly never.) Once I grew up, past five, six, seven years old, and realized I could not convince my mom that I was NOT the one who had made such a mess of my bedroom, when, of course, I was, I think I didn't see the point in lying. My young brain figured that lying was futile because everyone was probably equipped with a fantastic lie-o-meter like my mother’s. If my mom knew a tall tale was about to come out of my mouth, before my lips even parted, everyone must know when others aren't being honest.

It didn’t matter what fib I told my mom. She knew. Oh, she knew. There was that time I told my mother that it wasn’t me who stuck her fingers in the cake frosting, even though there were little-girl-sized swipe-dents all the way around the bottom edge of the chocolate-frosted pound cake. There was that other time I held my position, firm, that it wasn’t me who broke the big owl statue in the hallway. So what if there were pieces of broken-owl-statue plaster in my sock drawer. “I didn’t do it”, I told my mom. Sometimes I would even tell me mother that I had, indeed, washed my hands before dinner when, clearly, I hadn’t.

As time went on, I figured out that the crap I made up, and felt way guiltier for lying about than most kids, was just normal kid stuff. I also learned, as I got older, that a lot of people do, in fact, get away with lying.

But, my mom taught me not to lie. She taught me how it made others feel when they were lied to. Shoot, everyone can remember being a kid and seeing that look on their mother's face when she asked, even though she already knew the answer, "Are you lying to me?" And then we, rather than tell the truth, lied again.

We might as well have put a dagger straight into our mother’s bellies. We could see the disappointment we’d caused curling the corners of our mother’s eyebrows inward and up. In that moment we had experienced for ourselves, in our own stomachs, how thick the air had become with our untruth. But, because we were kids, we would lie again and then lie about lying. We knew not the gravity of the lesson that our mothers, and life, were trying to hand us. But, man-o-man, did we ever know, in that icky-feeling part of us, that that lesson sucked. Oh, what a tortuous, difficult rite of passage we all went through in our young lives, learning the value of integrity and telling the truth.

Why’d we lie in the first place? Why do we lie now? I think that when we were kids our brains weren’t developed enough to choose between the fight/flight protection mode and the reasoning (and/or lack thereof) that we were developing and/or have now developed. (Well, most of us have developed a moral compass that keeps us on track.) We only knew that the lie, the thing that didn’t feel comfortable but felt like it was going to save our tooshies (we reverted to instinct), was the way we should go. Go figure. Then, as we got older, even while we’d acquired the ability to understand how certain lies can damage everyone involved, the truth is still scary enough (to many folks) that the lie somehow feels better.

I think people forget that lies can rob a person of their basic need to be honored, to be respected. I don’t think people mean to patronize or degrade others. (Yes, I know that is a Pollyanna view, but that’s me). After all, most folks, whether we’re a kid or an adult, we just want to eat that friggen cake frosting without repercussion, man.

Plus, we all learn that there is a rhyme to the reasoning behind some lies. Gosh, even while my mother’s disappointment ‘look’ was friggen intense, and while it left me never wanting to be the person that someone knew was lying to them, I have learned that all lies aren’t bad. I have recognized the value of the white lies which can spare someone’s feelings. (No, that S.O.F.A: Shirt Over Fat Ass that you are wearing isn’t obvious.) I had no problem embracing the professional lies that people use/write to get a great job when I was 25 yrs old. (My resume was padded until I was 31years old.) And, I take every opportunity to throw out three cheers for the everyday lies that we tell ourselves.

Yes. I’d rather lie to myself a little than be hard on myself for “whatever” it is. Um…GO lie! in that situation. We spent a childhood, and most of our young adult lives, being told what is wrong with us by our parents, by teachers, and by society. They all said, “Do this. Don’t do that. You are in trouble. You can’t do that right. Do it this way. It’s the law. Because I said so.” So you better believe I am going to tell those mental weights to get stuffed. I have no desire to spend the rest of my life feeling burned and flawed by that microscope.

Anyway, once I started to get a sense about others, and listen to that voice inside, that’s when I began to know when someone was lying to me. That’s also when my ability to lie developed a switch. A very cut and dry “can” or “can’t” lie switch which depends upon my relationship to a person or a situation. What this means is, because I treat others how I want to be treated, I am incapable of lying to anyone I love.

It’s the golden rule. I learned this in Brownies and again in Girl Scouts. I always say Karma is the only religion for me.

This is not a joke. I have no ability to put one over on anyone that I adore. But, have no fear, if I do not respect a person, if I do not hold their value in my heart or feel valued by them in the same way, or if I feel threatened by them (like how one might feel threatened by a bad boss who holds the control of their salary over them) make no mistake, I can lie my way into an academy award.

So, as idiosyncratic as this is, this lie switch thing, this is how I live. The minute I feel myself trying to hide something, even if I am embarrassed about it and I do not want someone to know about the thing I am trying to disguise, I just can’t hide it or lie about it from someone I love. I simply cannot. The truth just comes out. This happens without my consent. It’s like I have truth turrets syndrome.

But, I am okay with this. I figure it adds to my charm, that I am a sort of truthful rambler of sorts. Gawd, I hope this is the case, that my telling the truth all the time makes me more charming. If not, I won’t be able to lie to myself that it’s okay. Then, I’ll probably go crazy and end up on the streets homeless. I will be like a blurting schizophrenic. People will want to offer me apples. I’ll decline the damn apples. Duh. What homeless/toothless person wants a friggen apple? (Yes. If I am going to be homeless I’ll have to lose my teeth, too.) Who offers apples to the homeless anyway? That’s just stupid.

But, and this is where it gets a little personally funky for me, and where I attempt to pull this whole ‘lying’ tangent/intuition thing back around… I've lied to myself for a very long time about how intuitive I am. So, here’s me being honest: my intuition sometimes trips me out.

Why? Let’s go back to that premonition thing I was talking about earlier. Now, imagine, if you will, flashing on a digital clock in your sister's boyfriend's car and seeing the time (in bright-red digital-clock numbers) not as the time it actually is, but as a time that is an hour and several minutes later. Then imagine hearing yourself talking into a telephone receiver and telling your father that you, your brother, your sister and your sister's boyfriend, are all going to be late coming home from the family reunion because you have all just been in a car accident. Then, next, imagine seeing yourself sitting in the front seat of a police car filling out an accident report.

Now imagine that everything you imagined, which you do not know why you imagined it in the first place, because that’s just strange (thinking you are going to get into a car accident), happens as you imagined it. You experience a car side-swiping the car you, your brother, your sister and your sister's boyfriend (who was driving) are all in. You see the digital clock of your sister's boyfriend's car read out as the time you'd imagined. It is now that time.

A half of an hour later you are, indeed, sitting in the front seat of a police car and you are filling out an accident report. You are trying to explain to the policeman how this other car, a truck, was chasing your car down. You tell the police man that this car-chasing man came from the gas station that you were all just at. “Yes, officer. He rammed us off the road,” you say.

BTW, I hadn't imagined that getting rammed-off-the-road part before. No one thinks that a run-of-the-mill trip to the gas station is going to result in some guy (a dude Jeff Foxworthy would describe as a “you might be a redneck if” type) running you off the road. Sure, this mullet-wearing Neanderthal was making unwelcome advances towards my older sister inside the gas station mini-mart. But none of us had suspected that he’d threaten my sister’s boyfriend and then come after us to chase us all down. It’s just not reasonable to think that some inbred freak, with his big, 1980's, overblown 4x4 truck, is going to purposely bulldoze his truck into the car you are in and thus propel it into a tailspin which shatters all the car’s windows, upon impact, when it hits the curb.

Likewise, no one imagines that the peculiar thought that they have, that they might be late getting back to their grandmother’s house after a family reunion because of a car accident, is going to turn out to be what actually happens. It felt like déjà vu when I called my dad to let him know we’d be late. It felt worse, incomprehensible, that so many of the moments I had experienced had been part of what I’d already imagined.

That’s why, since I was about 16 years old (I might have been 14 or 15. I don’t totally remember.), and since I had an experience like that, which felt like more than good intuition, I learned to lie to myself. It was too much. So, I told myself it never happened like that. I told myself, which is the truth, that I didn't really know it was going to happen. But, I did have a feeling. I just had a feeling. That’s all.

I’ve not had something happen like that since, where I imagined something, thought it was weird, and then it happened. But I do get feelings all the time that I think are weird when they just pop into my head and they seem like they are the truth. Those are the feelings I call my intuition.

However, even though I am now a little more willing to admit that my intuition is pretty decent, there is a lot I still don’t say. I rarely tell people, who are not close to me, about the feelings I get about others, or about a situation. No matter how obvious something seems, I don’t say much, even if most of the time these things turn out to be right. These are, after all, just feelings. Seriously, again, I am not psychic.

Still, what happened last week at work was kinda freaky. It was just so clear, and so blatant, that what I was sensing played itself out. It wasn’t exact, and I didn’t imagine anything. It was just a feeling. But it was close enough, that even I couldn’t lie to myself and pretend that I don’t have good intuition.

Here is what happened that was a little freaky-deaky... I took a break at work around 3ish p.m. in the afternoon. Even though I’d already called Jen in the a.m. to wish her happy birthday, I called her a second time to see how her birthday was going. Then, just after I had gotten off of the phone with her, about 30 seconds later, maybe it was a minute afterwards, I happened upon this girl.

This girl was about 18-20 years old with long black hair and big, beautiful eyes. Upon seeing her, my thoughts were, as best as I can remember, what is written just below. It should be noted that I remember these thoughts so clearly because I felt weird that I was thinking some of these thoughts in the first place.

My thoughts:

Hmmm, she's pretty—really pretty. Gosh, she looks exotic. (Stop. People.This is not the weird part yet. This is not a lesbian fantasy.) I wonder what nationality she is. She must be waiting for someone to pick her up for a ride. Why is she standing there? She’s standing in a weird place. (She was out in the road/parking lot a bit and not on the sidewalk.) That really is a weird place for her to wait for a ride. She seems lost. She doesn’t look lost, but she seems lost. Man... Why do I want to give her a hug so bad? She seems like she could use a hug. That would be weird if I asked her if she needed a hug. WTF? Why do I feel so compelled to ask her if she needs a hug? That’s just weird. Shit. She’d look at me like a freak. Still, she really seems like she needs a hug. Man, why does it feel like she’s lost. She’s not lost. She’s fine. These are weird thoughts.

Then, as I continued to walk towards her, and before I had my next thought, this girl looked at me and said, "Hi."

It was a meager "Hi." I'd be pushing it if I said her "Hi" seemed lost, because those thoughts I’d had of her being lost were instantly lost once she spoke. I just thought that her “Hi” seemed meager. I also thought that it was queer that she’d say hello to me because there was nothing about her energy that made her appear to be the kind of girl that goes around saying "Hi" to strangers.

Me? Oh, I'll tell a caterpillar hello. I’ll say hi to the pope and ask him to dinner, even though I am not Catholic, and I’ll tell him I’m serving spaghetti and meatballs and that he needs to bring the parmesan cheese and wine. I’m a G-dang dolphin in the human kingdom. Threaten me with a stranger, and I’m there making friends and saving sailors.

But, her? It just seemed unnatural for her to engage me, a stranger, even if I am that girl people like to chat up and who likes to chat them up. Again, people sense I am friendly. It’s been that way my whole life. I like people. But, she didn’t seem to be tapping into my energy like that. (Maybe she was.) Regardless, I gave her a hearty hello back, and asked, "How are you today?" That's when she said, "I don't know how I got here."

This response struck me, like OMIGOSH. Is she okay? What was spooky about it is that she’d honestly not looked weirded-out to me before. She just didn’t. That is why I felt weird for having the thoughts I’d had about her being lost and needing a hug. Her expression was pretty relaxed and casual, actually.

“What do you mean?” I asked her. "

I don't know how I got here," she said. "I ended up here. All of the sudden I am here… And, here you are. But I do not know how I got here."

Whoa. Whut?! I did not see that coming. My gray matter turned a bit shadowy with that one.

“Are you okay? Do you know where you are? Did you have a black out?” I asked her.

“Yeah. Yes. I know where I am. I am okay. I just don’t know how I got here. I just ended up here and I don’t know how I got here. This has never happened to me before.”

What was denting my brain more was that this girl did not seem scared. She was confused. Yes. But, she didn’t seem afraid. She just could not comprehend how she’d gotten from point A to point B. That is what was unsettling for her.

“Do you need me to take you somewhere? Are you afraid of what has just happened? What can I do for you?” I asked. “No. No. I’m fine,” she said. “I’m just confused. I know where I am. I know where I need to go now. I just…this has never happened.”

And, she did seem fine. She seemed off, but fine. Who wouldn’t be off? It was like she’d experienced that thing where you turn off of the freeway on an exit that is too soon or too late from where you are supposed to exit, but because this is your usual commute, your auto pilot has jacked you up. The next thing you know, you are in Compton. You see the 405 freeway in sight, so you know where you are and you know how to turn your car around, but you still can’t figure out how you made the wrong turn in the first place. That confusion, that “how’d I F’n get here” feeling, is the feeling I think she was experiencing…on crack.

Even though she looked calm, I didn’t want to scare her more than she might have already been side socked by the experience. Seeing her cell phone in her hand, I made a suggestion. “You know what I would do if was in your shoes and felt like how you might feel right now? I’d call a friend or a family member and tell them, ‘Hey, I just had something weird happen to me. I might have blacked out. I’m fine, but I want you to know where I am and where I am going so that you can call me in 5-10 minutes to make sure that I’m fine in case it happens again.’ Then you should ask them to keep tabs on you until you are with someone else and until you are in someone’s company long enough to know this was an isolated incident.”

She now looked dazed, as if the shock of what had happened was starting to hit her. “Yes. Okay. Thank you. I will do that.” She really did seem like she’d be fine, but I had to ask, “Are you sure you are okay? I can walk you somewhere or I can call someone. Really, I can.”

“Yes. I’m fine. I am.” Then, just as she was about to walk away from me she turned to me and said, “I know this sounds strange, but can I have a hug? I really need a hug?”

“Of course,” I said.

Man, did I ever feel good to be able to give this girl a hug and to realize why I’d had that thought. She needed a hug, damn it. Who wouldn’t after blacking out, if that is what happened to her.

What I am trying to say is that it was weird, but really cool, that I sensed this girl was lost and needed a hug. I haven’t had intuition like that, that was so pound for pound, in a long time. But, I think we can all do that, listen to our inner voice. We’re all so, so capable of it and already doing it.

Let’s not deny that part anymore that is such a natural part of all of us. If we’re all connected, why wouldn’t we be able to sense what’s going on in others? Why not tap into that? That inner voice, whether it’s a gnawing at us to keep our kids safe (even when we think we’re being silly) or an alarm that it is time to change jobs (okay, that one is easy), or even a nudge in our gut that we can help a stranger (better yet, a family member or friend) it’s telling us something.

That voice is our inner knowing keeping us connected to each other. We know what is hollering at us from deep within. Let’s answer that call. It is time to wake up and take notice of that strange part of us that isn’t so strange. It’s time to stand up and follow that path we’ve estranged ourselves from. Be it fear, or whatever, that’s kept us from it, it’s time we hear it, see it, smell it, touch it, and taste it for what it is… It’s our intuition and we need to listen.

Everyone should let their intuition sit at their dinner table more often. We are so much smarter and way more amazing than we give ourselves credit for!!!

Keep being fabulous!