While skimming through the newspaper this morning, I happened to glance at my horoscope, which read: “Focus on practicalities. Chop wood and carry water. Maintain positive cash flow. Minimize waste. Conserve resources and energy.”
“Hm-m-m,” I said, because as luck would have it, I had chopped wood and carried water just a few minutes earlier on my way out to get the paper off the drive. (Well, I carried a watering can and sprinkled that pumpkin vine at the back of the yard, and I broke up a fallen branch lying on the lawn, so… yeah, close enough.)
As to the rest of the horoscope, earlier in the morning I had rinsed out my shampoo bottle to get those last few drops of lather out of it before recycling the plastic container, and I ate the good half of that last flaccid strawberry that was starting to look a little furry on the other side, so I guess you could say I had “minimized waste” and “conserved resources.” I had no plans to go out and buy anything, so my cash flow for the day would remain no worse than neutral, if not exactly positive.
So: “Hm-m-m,” I said to myself. How could my horoscope have nailed it so narrowly?
For the record, I rarely read the horoscope, because I think it’s a load of bull-pucky. But today’s horoscope was eerily on point. Was it like that every day? I couldn’t say, because I almost never read it.
I was curious to know if I am in the majority or the minority when it comes to my disbelief in the stars steering our fates, so I decided to ask Mama Google about it, and that led me down the rabbit hole.
My research tells me that 29 percent of Americans believe in the power of their daily horoscope and — I guess — steer their actions according to the stars.
That’s about the same percentage of Americans who believe that aliens have visited Earth and may be here right now, which, in my book, is another bucket of pucky.
Add to that the 45 percent of Americans who believe in ghosts and demons, and it’s fair to arrive at one inescapable conclusion about Americans: We be crazy. (Well, you be, anyway. I think it’s all one big pucky-pile. And don’t even get me started on the stolen-election and Jewish-space-laser loonies.)
But why stop there? How many Americans believe in the Loch Ness Monster? Mama Google was no help in telling me the answer, but one in four Scots do. Of course, when you start your day sipping scotch with your Sanka, you’re likely to see almost anything before the day is done.
Bigfoot, of course, is a different matter, because he’s real. I believe in him, and you’re living in denial if you don’t.
Mama Google tells me that American belief in Bigfoot varies widely—according to income, of all things. For those Americans earning less than $50K a year, Bigfoot belief runs around 43 percent. But for those making more than $150K, that number drops to only 11 percent.
Of course, that discrepancy is easy to explain, isn’t it? After all, it’s a well-known fact that Bigfoot spends more of his time walking along the railroad tracks between the dump and the swamp behind that poor guy’s house, rather than trying to scramble over those high fortified fences in the rich part of town. So it’s just common sense that those rich dudes wouldn’t have as much of a chance of bumping into a Bigfoot. Their low belief in Bigfoot reflects their understandable ignorance.
Anyway, that’s where my horoscope led me today—a statistical romp through America to find out how many people agree with me about such things, and how many others are just plain wrong.
But it gives me goosebumps, because I’ve never believed in the horoscope, and yet it’s spooky to see how accurate it was today. I don’t know if it’s only a random one-time coincidence, or if those details were really written in the stars. Of course, I’d have to read my horoscope every day to check its accuracy—but I’m not willing to do that.
I’m resisting the temptation because it’s like my aversion to kale: I hate kale, and I’m glad I hate it, because if I liked kale I’d eat it all the time — and I’d hate that.
In any case, I thought I’d share all this statistical information with you, because as my horoscope says, today it’s important for me to “focus on practicalities.”
Author, musician and storyteller TR Kerth is a retired teacher who has lived in Sun City Huntley since 2003. Contact him at trkerth@yahoo.com. Can’t wait for your next visit to Planet Kerth? Then get TR’s book, “Revenge of the Sardines,” available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other online book distributors.
