 “SHE WHO LAUGHS...”© Copyright 3-20-2007 By Dana Shino, The Purple Phoenix, LLC www.thepurplephoenix.com The tan Westfalia VW Van pulled into the opening ahead of me as traffic merged to one lane for road construction heading into downtown Durango, Colorado. I wouldn’t have paid much attention, except the van was a dead ringer for my mentor’s old vehicle and reminded me of her. My antennas automatically stood to attention and my brain registered: “Linda! Ding!” I was close enough behind the VW to read two tattered bumper stickers. One said, “She Who Laughs, Lasts” and the other said, “Simplify.” I nodded my head and giggled to myself. Then, for some odd reason, I looked up and to my right. As if on cue, the marquee read, “Ladies Happy Hour.” I laughed out loud, thinking my Spirit Guides had outdone themselves. I mentally said, “Noted!” and continued my errands. The next morning, in preparation for a trip to Keystone, Colorado, to visit one of Bob’s friends, I zipped out for a few groceries. The traffic line for the stop light interrupted the flow of traffic in and out of the City Market parking lot. I waited for traffic to clear, giving space for several other drivers to leave the parking lot, among them, none other than the Westfalia VW Van I’d seen the day before. I knew Durango was practically a small village, but this was ridiculous. I looked for the bumper stickers and, sure enough, they were there. My Spirit Guides really wanted me to see this message about laughter and simplicity. “Noted!” I said again, and went into the grocery store, so beginning a series of loosely strung wacka-doodle events. That night, I attended my first women’s business networking meeting in Durango. Evidently, I’d been hiding behind my computer for too long because I felt like an ungainly and gangly teenager with a giant pimple on the end of my nose. Whatever lyrical wording and grace I’m able to convey on this website departed me at the door of the event. In the course of an hour I managed to trip on my purse handles after setting my purse on the floor; cough in the middle of the meeting on a dry holistic homemade cracker the hostess had graciously set out for us (the last sip of my herbal tea was gone); spit upon one of the women I was visiting with; and completely loose any framework of intelligible wording I possessed. Miraculously, my internal idiot experience did not completely register externally. Several women were interested in speaking with me after I announced my psychic capabilities. As I left the meeting, I thought, “So, this was a psychic having a marketing experience.” That night, the psychic fog unexpectedly set in. The psychic fog is the mysterious phenomenon of losing, bit by bit, your Type A, tactile abilities, while at the same time experiencing the growth of psychic enlightenment. It’s the damndest inverse relationship. One day, you’re functioning moderately well, able to tie your shoe laces, remember pertinent phone numbers and recall specific words. The next day you’re wondering why, at 37, you are exhibiting similar Alzheimer’s and dementia symptoms as your grandparent’s did at 92. The next morning, unaware my psychic fog had arrived, I set a clean frying pan on top of a stove cover resting over a stove burner. I inadvertently did this while unloading the dishwasher in efficient preparation to cook the buffalo meat for the chili for the Keystone trip. Simple enough, however, I failed to remove the stove cover once I turned on the heat to cook the onions for the meat. A little while later, I couldn’t understand why the pan wasn’t sufficiently heating until I smelled the acrid burn of chemicals. I whipped the pan off the stove and the cover off the burner. The cover was toast. Despite the questionable start, I managed to pull it together for the trip, functioning relatively well until the following night when I couldn’t locate my knitting. I was sure I had left it in the truck because I wasn’t able to locate it in my bag. When I arrived at the truck, parked a quarter of a mile away (in the cold, snow and dark)... no knitting. Back in the hotel room, as I entered through the door, it struck me. I’d put it in the side panel of my bag. It was a minor detail, but still irritating. The icing on the psychic fog cake was my grocery shopping trip after Bob and I returned. I was happy to be home, ‘floating’ in my own world. Halfway through grocery shopping, in the middle of the store, while comparing the difference between regular sugar and organic sugar, a kind gentleman approached me. I guessed him to be in his early 70’s. I thought he was looking for something on the shelf and my cart was blocking his view. So, I moved the cart. But no, he indicated a list lying in the metal seat of the cart. I too had noticed the list while pushing the cart down another aisle, and thought it odd that someone would put their list in my shopping cart. I was happy to give him his list back. Then he pointed out the items in ‘my’ cart were ‘his’ items. I was simultaneously mortified and amused. In the frozen meat section I had inadvertently and unconsciously commandeered his cart, getting nearly three aisles away from the grocery crime. We pushed his cart back to mine and swapped items – so many of the items in our carts had been similar. He was kind about the incident, mentioning he had done it frequently himself. I was humbled into returning to reality. You would think this is the end of the story. However, my Spirit Guides weren’t finished. Several days later, I was reading my favorite cartoon, “For Better or Worse.” The two sisters, April and Elizabeth, were in a spat and the last frame said, “She who laughs last, laughs best.” My Spirit Guides were driving home a point, but none so deliberate as this. About four or five days after the cartoon incident I was traveling to a meeting in town. My truck was running on fumes, so I turned in to the gas station. As I pulled up to the pump, I heard one of my Spirit Guides say, “No time for that missy, get your butt down town.” Okey dokey. So, I hummed downtown and as I prepared to turn down 6th I felt a tug. The tug pulled me to 8th where I turned and parked further down the street. After turning off the engine, I looked around and wondered, “What is up?” I gathered my meeting materials, walked down the street, turned and crossed at the cross walk. Then, several steps from the corner windows at the Gardenswartz outdoors shop, for no apparent reason, I stopped, turned to my left and there was the Westfalia VW Van grinning at me.  Your contributions help support The Purple Phoenix Press.
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