The Metaphysical Hotline

"Juno, can you take a call on line 1?"

"Yep," With one sneakered foot I pushed off from the filing cabinet, rolled smoothly across the little office to my desk, and swiveled to grab the phone.

"Hi, this is Juno. How can I help you?" I asked brightly, leaning back in my seat and putting my feet on the desk.

A man's voice came over the line. He was an up-talker--one of those people that makes the end of every sentence sound like a question.

"I was in your store the other d-d-day? And I b-b-bought this book on p-p-personal p-p-power?"

"Yes?" I said politely. I picked up the rubber band ball from my desk and began playing with it.

"Well, I have a q-q-question?"

"Okay."

Immediately I knew this was not going to be one of those straight questions like they get over at Barnes and Noble. New Age book store customers are a unique species. They don't just buy books--they hold you personally accountable for the information inside.

"Say someone takes all their p-p-personal p-p-power and p-p-puts it in a glass of water?"

I knew it. This was not going to a happy place.

"And say that a d-d-dog came along and d-d-drank all the water?"

I could hear the terror in his voice and wondered what sort of dog he had. A great dane? A german shepard? Or maybe it was a little chuhuahua that had gotten all full of his big bad self and developed an attitude.

"Is that b-b-bad?" You could tell he expected the worst.

Now there are two ways to answer a call like this. One of them appealed to my sense of humor, while the other appealed to my need for job security.

I hedged.

"Was it tap water or spring water, sir?"

"T-t-tap water," he said and the panic rose in his voice. "Is that b-b-bad?"

I started to feel a little sorry for him. And I'm a wuss when it comes to this sort of thing. I have evil intentions but am too softhearted to follow through.

"No, no--it's fine," I reassured him. "I just wondered."

I took a deep breath, "Now, about your question. . ."

I looked at the rubber band ball in my hand, suddenly inspired.

"Listen, you've heard people talk about there being a silver cord that attached your soul to your body, right?"

"Yes?" his voice quavered.

"Well . . . there is a sort of red rubber band thing that attaches you to your personal power. You can never really lose your power because if it gets too far away from your body it just snaps back into place."

"Really?"

"Absolutely," I replied firmly. ""Don't worry about a thing."

I could feel his relief.

"Th-thank you. Th-thank you so much!"

"No problem."

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I always got stuck with the weird calls no one quite knew how to handle. My training as a single mother of two made me perfectly equipped to deal with just about any situtation.

"We have poltergeist activity at our house. Things are blowing around everywhere, and we hear strange voices. It's really starting to scare the children."

"Have you asked it to leave?" I offered.

Silence.

"Ummmm. . . well . . . no . . . not exactly. I meaned we tried doing protection spells and stuff, but we didn't just tell it to go away."

"Well there you go."

Another satisfied customer.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .


"There's a ghost in our home,"a woman whispered into the receiver. "We keep seeing this white figure move through the hallway and into the family room. We think it's the ghost of the old woman who died here. She's very angry."

Okay, I'll bite.

"How do you know she's angry?"

"She keeps knocking things over and moving stuff around. And she makes this eerie howling sound."

I thought for a minute. "What's your family room like, if you don't mind my asking?"

"Well right now it's a mess." The woman laughed a little self consciously. "We're using it as a storage area for all the stuff we don't have room for. Mainly laundry, newspapers, old furniture and electronic equipment--things like that."

I identified with the ghost. I could be driven to the brink of insanity just by looking at my kids' messy rooms. Maybe if we had a ghost it would unnerve them enough that they would keep them clean.

I decided to give the poor ghost a little help. "I think you should clean the room."

"What?" the woman sounded offended.

"If you want the problem to stop, you will have to do a ritual cleansing of the room."

"How do I do that?"

"Well you begin by cleaning the room, making it nice. You have to shift the energy, so to speak. Then light some candles and scent the room with some cinnamon incense or oil."

I am very fond of candlelight and nice smells.

"That's it?" the woman sounded supsicious.

"Of course not," I said with dignity. "After you're done you need to say a blessing on the room asking that it be a place of love and joy and peace. Trust me, it will work."

"Okay," the woman said doubtfully. "I'll try it."

"Good."

I smiled to myself as I hung up the phone. True, I had just frustrated a customer who was now going to have to spend her whole weekend cleaning.

But I was willing to bet I had just made some tidy little ghost very happy.