My Messiah Moment

My Messiah Moment (con.)

When we got to the party, there was a great booth available right in front of the entertainment. We sat down and waited for things to begin. A couple of minutes later I noticed this man coming through the door, he looked like an American, but what drew my attention to him was the bandage that covered half his head and his entire right ear. I couldn't keep my eyes off of him.

He noticed me staring at him, came over to our booth, and asked us if he could sit down and join us. I said sure, put out my hand to shake his and introduced my associate and myself. He introduced himself, and, with little surprise on my part—the bandage was a dead give away—I discovered that he was the same man who had had dinner with the woman I had spent time talking to the night before.

We sat there for a minute or so waiting for things to begin, and then I began acting kind of uncomfortable. They both looked at me, wondering what was going on. I told them, "This is really kind of embarrassing."

Now they really began to get interested.

"Once in awhile when I touch someone…visions, like movies, will flow into my mind."

Now they began to get uncomfortable. After all, the man with the bandage had only just met me, and my associate had only become acquainted with me that morning.

I continued. "The problem is, that when I have these visions I am compelled to share them with the people involved."

They were now looking at each other, wondering what they had gotten into.

"When I just shook your hand I had one of these visions, and I need to tell you what I saw."

He looked at me, back at my associate as if to say what is going on, and then back at me.

I continued, "I saw you walking down the beach. I think it’s early in the morning, maybe as early a 6am. You have two cameras, one around your neck and you're taking pictures with the other. Two men with baseball bats come up behind you, hit you over the head, grab your cameras and bag, and run off. You struggle to your feet, make your way to the road where you flag down a taxi that takes you to the hospital.

I finished talking, looked at both of them, got an embarrassed look on my face, and kind of shrugged my shoulders. There was a moment of silence, and the stranger said, "That is exactly what happened! How did you know?" I told him I wasn't sure how I knew, that the vision just came into my head when we shook hands.

I looked over at my friend to see a look of awe on his face, when I looked back at the stranger I saw the same look mirrored there. I knew at that moment in time that these two men would follow me anywhere, would do whatever I asked them to. For them I had become more than human--someone to follow, someone to lead them to the Promised Land.

We sat there for a while, in kind of an uncomfortable silence, and I said, "Does the name Peabody, Jones and Hatfield mean anything to you." He said, "That's the company I work for! How do you know all of this about me?" I shrugged my shoulders and looked back toward the entertainment that had begun by now.

Over the next hour I slowly fed back to them all of the information I had learned about him from the woman I had talked with. With each new piece of information I assured my position in history as the new Messiah with these two men as my first loyal disciples. Visions of greatness were dancing through my head; I knew that someday this place would be revered by millions as the place where our new religion first began.

Then I said, "I see you having dinner last night with an attractive women from New York City, the dinner is over and you are saying to her, 'You know the doctor is afraid I might have a concussion and told me it would be better if I didn't go to sleep tonight. Do you think you could come back to my hotel room and help me stay awake all night?' She gets angry with you, refuses to have anything to do with your plan, pays for her dinner, and then gets up and walks out of your life."

I watch him and see the transformation as the truth flows into the inner parts of his being. A smile spreads across his face and he says, "You talked to her after I did; didn’t you?"

I broke into uncontrollable laughter and nodded my head in the affirmative. He began to laugh too, not only with the joke, but with the relief that there was a reasonable explanation for what had happened. My associate too was relieved. I don't think he liked the idea of doing business with a seer. But, I was disappointed. I had blown my chance at fame and immortality, and I was sure I would never have as good a chance again.

THE END