A Toss of the Aquarius Coin

Horoscopes are something I really don’t accept as authentic. I have access to at least three of them each day and I sometimes get a kick out of noting how they so often contradict one another.

This afternoon I opened my homepage on MSN and this horoscope for today jumped out at me:

A pleasant surprise comes your way today, when you receive either a present or a small sum of money, perhaps in the mail. Someone will either pay you back a small loan you once made them, or else you could receive a gift for some small service you performed for them. You could be tempted to turn that around, dear Aquarius, and go buy a present for someone else. Expect some phone calls that result in long and meaningful conversations.

I say that it jumped out at me because it was so accurate.

This morning I was subpoenaed to traffic court to be a witness against someone I didn’t think that I knew. It turned out that I did know him: he was the guy who caused the three car accident on the expressway in which mine was the car in front.

In the courtroom I learned the guy had no insurance, which explains why I could not get his supposed insurance company to respond to me. I waited more than three hours for the case be called and ended up getting the $35.00 back I paid to have my exhaust system remounted, which was the only damage to my car from the accident.

Thus, my horoscope was accurate in stating that today I would receive a “pleasant surprise” in the form of a small sum of money.

Later in the afternoon I received another surprise: a telephone call from a former parishioner to whom I had not spoken in more than six months. We had a relatively long conversation, which has had most consequential results.

Thus, part two of my horoscope was valid: a long and meaningful conversation.

That said, I still don’t believe in horoscopes. When I was in college, we were asked to keep a 30-day log of the most significant events that took place each day. At the end of the thirty days, we compared our logs with our daily horoscopes, which we had not looked at during the period. Overall, the class decided that about 50% of the horoscope predictions were accurate in some form or another. That’s not a great forecast rate for any seer! It’s sort of like flipping a coin.

I suppose today was one of those days when the 50% coin toss just happened to be fairly accurate!