Who knows what will come? (3/15/04)

My daughter was recently told that she will get pregnant soon and will have a baby girl. An elderly lady who was patiently waiting to be taken care of in the emergency room noticed Beth as she hurried down the hall to care for another patient. The woman asked her own nurse if Beth was pregnant and when she was told that she wasn’t, she then said Beth would be soon and would have a girl.

The woman’s nurse sent Beth into the room and the lady repeated that Beth would soon be pregnant and would give birth to a daughter. When questioned, the woman’s granddaughter said her grandmother “senses” things. There was no indication as to whether or not her predictions were eerily accurate or best forgotten. I’ll let you know how it turns out.

Most women wait until they are definitely with child before they find out if they should purchase mostly pink or mostly blue things for the infant. People are always trying to predict the sex of the unborn child by how the woman is “carrying” the baby or by some other means. I was told that I would have a daughter just hours before her arrival by a nurse who observed that unborn babies with faster (or was it slower?) heart rates tended to be girls.

Thanks to a chance encounter we know that I can start buying frilly dresses and dolls as soon as we find out for sure there is even going to be a baby in the family. However we don’t know when “soon” will be so maybe I should hold off on the shopping.

For centuries, people have been attempting to predict the future. Remember the Oracle at Delphi? It was around for a couple thousand years before Christ.

According to what I can find on the phenomenon, the Oracle was vague enough that her predictions could be taken several different ways. No matter how the issue turned out, the Oracle was proven right.

Since my daughter is actually wanting to have a baby, the lady has a pretty good chance of having that part of her prediction come true. She also has a fifty-fifty chance of the child being a girl. Do you think the woman could be a reincarnation of the ancient Oracle? One never knows for sure about these things.

One of the most famous predictions, one that almost everybody knows about, centers on March 15. The soothsayer told Caesar to “Beware the Ides of March.” He didn’t tell Caesar what to do to avoid his fate other than to “beware.” Caesar didn’t beware and was subsequently stabbed. Thus Shakespeare gained material for one of his plays.

Generations of schoolchildren were then subjected to learning about this incident so they could complain that it was more useless information they would never use. Note to my high school English teacher: I have finally made use of this material.

As long as we don’t fancy ourselves as Roman emperors/dictators, and have friends named Brutus, the Ides of March is not to be feared more than any other Monday. While I was checking on this bit of history, I found out the Ides of March was considered to be the first day of spring in ancient Rome.

Nowadays we have to wait until the 20th or 21st of March for spring to begin. Also, most people look forward to the first day of spring and would look at a person strangely if told to beware of it.

Some part of us wants to know what the future holds otherwise Miss Cleo would be out of a job as would the countless palm readers and other fortune tellers.

Don’t believe in all that stuff? Are you sure? Do you listen to the weather forecast and dress accordingly? Do you read about the predicted winner of the presidential election then decide not to vote because “it has already been decided?” Do you bet on a sports team in the office pool?

We have an innate fear of the unknown and seek to avoid that fear by peeking into the future any way we can. If a stranger can reassure my daughter that she will one day have a daughter of her own, what’s the harm? You never can be certain about what the future holds. The woman could be right.

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