Skepticblog

You Can Forget All THAT Junk!

“Anyone can do what you did. I can’t believe we paid for it,” he protested.

The psychic shot back a pithy, “No sir. I doubt that. Palmistry is an ancient psychic tool that I am a gifted channel to work through.”

“Yeah? Bull! I could do what you did with anything. There’s no gift in any of it. It’s all in how you said what you told my wife and how she responded to it.”

The skeptic happened to have a banana in his hand at the time. It had been his chosen snack that day. He decided to call the bluff of the psychic on her claim.

“Alright then, I’ll do a reading for you using this banana. How’s that sound?”

“The banana?”

“That’s right, the banana. Listen to this. The way you peel the banana will tell me about your past. The way you eat the banana will tell me what’s going on in your present, and the lines on the inside of the banana peel will tell me everything I need to know about your future.”

“You’re joking.”

The skeptic challenged, “Now you don’t think much of my psychic gift do you?”

“Alright, do it!” said the confident psychic, sure that anything as silly as a banana reading would all come to naught.

As the story goes, the skeptic went ahead and did a reading for the psychic using the banana and at its end, the psychic had to admit that the skeptic had been 95% accurate with everything he had spoken. The skeptic’s banter had likely consisted of general statements as well, but the psychic, being the trenchant shut-eye believer that he was and probably not wanting to lose any more credibility with the rest of his crowd, took it all as gospel.

Yet the most astounding part of this story is what transpired some years later when the skeptic apparently fell on hard times. After losing his job in the aerospace industry due to that all too real curse of the 80’s known as downsizing and desparate for gainful employment, his wife half-heartedly suggested he start doing private psychic readings to supplement their income. The rest is as they say history. He’s been a very successful reader ever since. He doesn’t refer to himself as a psychic, preferring to stay out of the limelight by referring to himself simply as a “spiritual advisor.” I’m not in any position to confirm or deny that he continued using bananas to claim his own rightful place among the luminaries of British psychical tradition, but who knows?

This true tale of two worlds not only illustrates my point about the “anything goes” aspect of the gullible world we live in, but the skeptical sage of UK bananaisms also served to inspire my own fruitful shenanigans.

Not too long ago, my days of working out of a seedy church environment as a paid “professional psychic” were becoming longer and longer and I was rapidly growing disillusioned with the whole depressing psychic-believer dynamic. Putting up with listening to so many nincompoops who showed no discernable rationality whatsoever was becoming less and less dynamic with each passing week. I had learned what I felt I needed to and arrived at a crossroad, deciding that dealing with half hour to hour palm reading sessions with borderline lunatics was causing me to lose far too much energy for what I was getting out of the experience. A healthy chunk of the sitters I had been doing palm readings for needed serious psychiatric help (not to mention the staff) and I wasn’t qualified to professionally analyze them or ready to go back to school and get a degree to learn how. Having absorbed and then regurgitated as much of the new age spiritualist movement as I thought I could stomach without permanently damaging my entire outlook on humanity, I needed a change. My conscience was beginning to get on my nerves. Deep down in that intuitive gut that I had learned to listen and pay attention to, I knew I was beginning to become lazily repetitive in my readings and generally complacent. This is not a healthy level for anyone, much less a “professional psychic” to descend to. I was losing sleep and taking in far too much of the over-hyped paranormal silliness that I had witnessed a bit too seriously for my own critically thinking good. This malaise was a bad sign and as the sayings go: be true to thyself and I knew I was either a part of the solution or a part of the problem. The sordid world I was being swept into didn’t feel like part of any great solution.  I needed to shake things up, realizing that it was just a matter of time before I was forced to quit or go bonkers. I was at the end of my tether or if you prefer astro-projectively speaking, at the end of my silken silver cord.

Finding myself in this weary frame of mind one gloomy Saturday morning as I pulled on my semi – eastern California swami garb and prepared to head out on the hour drive to another weekend of palm readings, I found I could barely summon the strength to climb into my car. I was one burnt out psychic suffering a bad case of the psychic blues. As I set out on my way to the lovely city of Anaheim to work my eight hours at Ye Olde Psychic Faire, I passed a busy Mexican grocery store. Sitting in the bright morning sun atop one of the fruit stalls was a gigantic bunch of ripe bananas…

What a thing of beauty thought I. Recalling the story I had heard about the British psychic, my mischievous side began to plot and my semi-dormant risk-taking circuits began firing off like road flares in my mind. I wondered what my fellow seers and charlatans would think if instead of my usual table set-up of crystals and other psychic gift shop crap, I cleaned everything off except a colossal bunch of bananas. What could they say or do? I had little to lose, having never heard of a psychic actually being fired for anything. I would probably have had to rob or kill someone to be asked to leave the sanctuary of the church I was working in. In that part of town, they needed psychics far more than we needed their venue. So I slid a twenty dollar bill into the hand of the grateful grocery man and filled the back seat of my car with the brilliantly ripe yellow fruit.

Arriving a little later in the morning than usual due to my unscheduled stop, I quickly carried in my new divination tools after everyone else had set-up and plopped the bunch down on my table. Everyone else was busy as usual with their bevy of anxious sitters and I casually sat down as if nothing was amiss. I didn’t see anyone so much as bat an eye in my direction. If anyone had taken notice of what I had entered and laid out on my table, they were playing it low key and wisely employed their practiced psychic eyes and chose not to react; either not caring (jaded lot as they were) or figuring Mark had finally gone round the bend, resisting any temptation to upset the normally discrete psychic vibrations that were ever present in the quietude of the church’s nave.

As soon as Peter, the proprietor of the operation and finished chatting up a curious customer, he strolled over as casually as he could manage under the circumstances.

“Hi Mark,” he said obliquely.

“Hey Pete. What’s goin on?” I replied nonchalantly.

 “What’s with the bananas?” Peter was the type who knew how to cut right to the chase, especially when money was involved.

“The bananas?” I asked as if confused by his question.

“Yeah, the bananas. I mean, …where’s your stuff?” He asked, looking around my table for a magnifying glass, Palmistry chart or hint of anything vaguely psychic.

“My stuff?  …Oh yeah well, I’m reading bananas today. It’s the latest thing in England you know. People really like it. They get to have a reading and eat a snack for the same price.”

“You’re kidding aren’t you?” Peter looked worried. Suddenly people were turning their heads and tuning into Peter and my conversation. Several sitters were caught in a stultifying mid-reading silence, while their psychic sat momentarily dumbstruck as they watched and listened to Peter and I talk over a pile of bananas. It was a priceless moment of pure street performance art.

“No, I’m not kidding. Would I kid you? The way they peel the banana tells me about their past. The way they eat it tells me about their present and the lines on the inside of the peel tell me about their future. You should try it sometime Peter.”

“Whatever Mark, but I predict you won’t be too busy today.” Peter quickly moved away from my table as if he might catch something from me if he stayed any longer and swiftly made his way back to the safety of his office. The fair then clicked seamlessly back into motion like clockwork and once again the room hummed with psychic buzzwords, filling every corner with alluring mystical vernacular.

Not so amazingly, once the word got around about what I was doing and the onlookers had a chance to see I was taking the whole thing quite seriously, I was busy all day. My instincts had told me that people might prefer something different now and then and enjoy a novelty proved true. I was definitely offering something new for a dollar a minute. Although I didn’t do quite as many readings as some of the other days where aI had worked like a dog at this psychic sweatshop, Peter’s prediction of a wash-out turned out to be wrong. As the day went by, I fared better than the average afternoon of the same-old-same-old palm readings. Any timed minutes I may have lost through the few sitters that chose someone else rather than my decidedly different lay out was actually made up for by adding on extra time for the sitters who had to chew their bananas. After all, this was only common courtesy and I had to be patient with their eating habits. People laughed out loud and had a really good time too, rather than the usual stoop shouldered averted eyes and downtrodden moods so commonly seen in seriously metaphysical habitats. The poor mans’ therapy had been magically transformed into a carnivaleque fun zone for a change.

A couple of my regular sitters came by for their weekly readings and one lady I had sat with dozens of times refused to eat her banana. It was all just too much for her, poor thing. I hadn’t figured on the possibility that someone might dislike bananas. I still managed to tell her what she needed to hear, which hadn’t changed that much since we had first met years earlier. My new divination method didn’t matter a bit to her. She remained unruffled and took it all in stride as if it was no different than tea leaves or tarot cards. With the banana augury system , I said the same things I had told her for years, sticking to my guns and holding a straight face to keep it all real as I gestured and pointed out the various archetypal lines on her banana peel. She paid the same money for exactly the same words and wisdom, only this time she held a banana instead of me holding her hand.

Added up, I counted out just about the usual cash take in by day’s end, give or take a buck or two. Any small amount of difference was more than made up for by the fact that had enjoyed a hilarious afternoon I will never forget. I’m confident many of the sitters will remember that day too. For the many overweight sitters that frequented the fair, it was a healthy alternative to the pizza shack next door. The office staff never mentioned anything odd or unusual to me about that day or brought to my attention any momentary lapse of my reason. Why should they as long as they got paid their cut of the action? They had probably seen much stranger things in their years of conning the public. I probably stretched the limits as far as my credibility went with a few folks by doing this stunt, but I often wonder if anyone ever asks for a banana reading after I left that venue. I have never felt the need to repeat this performance. Bananas can be expensive.

And if you don’t believe that bananas can be put to prophetic use just as easily as a tarot card or a crystal ball, (or even a cat turd if you are an ancient Egyptian seer) watch me do a banana reading at a session I did on The Amazing Cruise with Randi and company:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wh97S5qzycm

So what will it be?

This: 

This:

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or,

This: 

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