How Did I Get Here and Why Are All These Dead People Talking to Me?

If you would have told me maybe 15 years ago that one day I would regularly be consulting with dead people and asking them for practical advice, I would have probably laughed and told you to stop trying to steal plots from Tim Burton movies and passing them off as real life. And yet here I am.  How the heck did I arrive at this place that seems at this point totally natural to me and yet highly suspect to lots of other people?

I wish I could tell you something exciting and mystical, like "It came to me in a dream!" or that I did a bunch of 'shrooms and communed with the cosmos.  But my life is much more boring than all of that.  In fact  I won't even eat the kind of mushrooms that come on a pizza, but let's not get distracted with my food issues right now.

I didn't wake up one day and decide to start communing with spirits (man, I hate that word, but I suppose I need to start out using language that makes sense more or less to other people).  It wasn't even on my radar. I was doing practical things like working and going to college and trying to pay the bills and even navigate a divorce.  Pro Tip, kids: maybe try not to get married at 18; we all don't know what we want or need for ourselves as much as we think we do, not that our family can tell us that and expect us to listen.

It was at the much older and wiser age of 19 (heh) that I started dating the man who would be the Right One for me, now my husband. His family, much to my delight, was weird.  And liked me.  More or less. You know how some people go all out decorating their house for Christmas, all Griswold style?  They did it for Halloween. They laughed at fart jokes. They were utterly inappropriate, and I fit into their quirky niche like I was meant to go there.

One of the novel things I experienced for the first time with Hubby and his family, which seemed rather inconsequential  at first, was the talking board. The Matty (name to be explained later).  So that we are all on the same page here, and everyone understands what I am talking about, I will say this word one time and avoid it hereafter, like one avoids a racial slur: this is a thing that many people would call a Ouija Board.  Bleh!  Patooie!  Really, that is a name that was used by a Parker Brothers game board, and it carries a stigma with it. You may have seen one. They're all over silly horror movies, catching on fire, letting in "Evil Spirits," etc.  You may have used one.  Maybe at a party.  People might have been drunk and asking stupid questions like, "Was I a princess in a past life??"  Let us be clear, the Ouija was a mass-produced novelty item, which existed for the purpose of making money.  I refer to it only to give some frame of reference, and I'm sure I will post in the future about what makes a good taking board versus a piece of crap.

Nevertheless, I saw my first board at my husband's parent's house. It was a round one, not square, like any I had ever seen before.  Because this was over 10 years ago, I started grilling my husband about how my first board experiences went, because to tell you the truth, I don't remember much. Turns out neither does he.  Does memory loss start at 30?  Sigh.  

I think I remember him first mentioning that his family had this "board" that they got from his grandmother.  A board that you could ask things.  Questions.  And much like many people, because he didn't say "Ouija" board (because it's not), I didn't really know what he was talking about at first, before I laid eyes on the thing.  I had a mental picture of literally a board.  Like a piece of wood that you could go buy at a lumber yard.  I know: I'm dumb.  I finally got the idea when he brought it out.  Oh a board. Got it.

The first time I went on the board, I think I was with my husband and his mom. I don't remember what we talked about. I remember having no real opinion either way going into it. I wasn't gung-ho, ready to talk to some ghosts, have a séance and summon up Elvis or Abe Lincoln or anything.  I wasn't a naysayer, either.  I was just curious.  Alright, let's see how this works. Let's see what this thing is.

Like many people, I am a slow boat to turn.  I am not generally someone who turns over new leaves overnight, kicks habits cold turkey, or busts down doors in life.  Ask anyone who has tried to get me to stop inserting the word "like" into my speech.  SoCal habits die hard.  And this board thing was no different.  As I began to use the board with my husband, I had questions.  Many, many questions.  Things had to be proven to me. I had to see evidence in my life.  I was not just taking the word of the Unseen, on good faith, no questions asked.  I'm very practical that way.  Show me.  Prove it.

And you know what? They did.  And do. Again and again.  Sometimes in so blatant a manner that I want to burst out laughing, or grab the phone and call hubby and say, "Dude!  You will not believe what just happened!"  Yes, I also say "dude" a lot.  Nobody's perfect.

A decade later, I find myself using the board (and sometimes other means) to talk to dead people and get their advice and listen to their stories, and this is integrated into my life with about the same normalcy as doing laundry, going to the movies, or playing with my cats.  It seems very mundane and even practical to me, and sometimes I forget that everyone doesn't do this and that it seems bizarre and even crazy to many people.

So this will be my blog. I wanted to archive somewhere my experiences of this sort and tell this story. And  for balance (because I am neurotic about making symmetrical, and because I wanted to show that people like me exist and we do not all dress like gypsy fortune tellers from the movies and talk in fruity prose) I am going to post about my regular life, too.  It's pretty normal, more or less.  I go to work.  I argue with Hubby about what to make for dinner.  I have road rage.  Sometimes I sleep with one arm at a funny angle and I wake up at two in the morning needing to pee and almost fall on my ass when I try to grab the door knob to the bathroom and discover that my arm is numb. You know, normal people stuff.  I just occasionally ask someone who used to be alive if next month is a good time to start a blog. And they say yes, so I guess I'll get on it.