It's Palm Sunday



By Tony Kornheiser



Sunday, January 26 1997; Page F01

The Washington Post 



NEW ORLEANS -- I became a little concerned about my health this week when I read a

story in USA Today reporting the results of a scientific study that concluded, and I quote,

"Boorish, bigmouth men die younger." 



What does this have to do with me, you ask? 



What a pig-faced moron you are. It has to do with me because even sophisticated,

self-effacing men like me must occasionally act a little assertively, such as when the waiter

gets my order wrong and it is necessary to express my displeasure via loudly questioning the

legitimacy of his birth, jamming bread sticks in his mouth and pulling his pants down. 



Anyway, this study got me a little worried. It occurred to me that possibly I should reconsider

my attitude and begin to treat people a teensy bit better, harness my temper and arrogance a

bit. You know, take up polo. Read Noel Coward. But instead, I decided to seek a second

opinion, from another scientific expert who might have a different, less dire but equally valid

view of my mortality. So I went to see a tarot card reader. 



There are loads of them here in the French Quarter, amid the jugglers and the clowns who all

do tricks for you. I picked Wyndee, a 23-year-old whose mother works at an adjoining card

table reading palms! What a nice touch. A family business. You know what they say: The

family that prognosticates together . . . um, eats frogs and grapes together.



Of the many reasons I chose Wyndee, the most important one was that unlike many of her

equally qualified colleagues on Jackson Square, she had no obvious boils on her nose. What

is it with tarot readers? Why do so many of them look like they've just walked out of a Diane

Arbus photo?



"Just tell me this much about my future," I told Wyndee. "Will it involve Elizabeth Hurley?"



For those of you who have never had a tarot reading, let me explain. There is a deck of

cards, and the reader turns over 10, and from those 10 tells you what's going on in your life

now, and what's going to happen to you in the future. They are exactly like TV weathermen,

only more accurate.



Wyndee (her sister is named Nynteepercentchanceofrain) had me shuffle the deck. Then she

began flipping cards. (As she turned them over I suppressed an urge to say, "Go fish.") All

the cards contain eerie Gothic drawings of a person, each symbolizing a hifalutin concept, like

"Hope" or "Beauty" or "A Bridge to the 21st Century." 



Wyndee turned a card up. 



"Death."



I took this as a bad sign.



She tried to reassure me. "It doesn't mean physical death. Actually, it can be good."



"Good death? Like good cholesterol?" I asked, grasping.



I looked at my other cards, and pointed to the one with a man lying on his stomach with 10

swords in his back. "That's a good card?" I asked. She didn't give me a straight answer. This

was not looking fabulous. 



Then I saw a card with three swords piercing a heart. "You're going to tell me that's good

too, even though it looks like whoever gets that card ought to call Dr. DeBakey?"



Wyndee made her first pronouncement. 



"You're an anxious, neurotic person." She was not looking at the cards. 



She went on with the reading. I had the King of Cups, which sounded good to me, like a guy

who needs a very big athletic supporter. And the Knight of Wands, who also seemed to

carry a big stick, if you get my drift, and a Queen. I was hoping it was the Queen of Soul,

which of course would mean I command r-e-s-p-e-c-t. The thrust of what it all meant, she

said, was that I was in a state of flux, and my career would soon be taking a different

direction.



"How soon?" I asked. I was hopeful. Maybe I didn't have to bother writing this column. 



Suddenly, Wyndee looked at me and asked, "Are you from New York?"



I am. Now that was impressive. "Which cards told you that?"



"Your accent told me that. I lived in Brooklyn once."



Oh.



Things were going so well, I decided to have Wyndee read my palm also. She told me to

extend the hand I write with.



I did, and she gasped, "The simian crease!"



She called to her mother: "Mom, read his palm. He has the simian crease."



I was alarmed. The simian crease! I might have to climb up the Empire State Building. 



I moved on to Wyndee's mom. 



In short order she told me that I was "inflexible, dogmatic, impatient and self-indulgent --

energetically so."



"You got all that from my hand?" I asked her. "Or were you talking to my family?" 



"How old are you, 40?" she asked.



Why was she looking at my palm? Couldn't she tell by reading the lines on my face?



"Right," she said. "Closer to 50."



The simian crease, it turns out, is a big deal. "It occurs," she said, pointing to a straight line

across the middle of my palm, "when your head line and your heart line are fused together. 



"It's the merging of the mental and the emotional. People who have this search for ideas;

they're very forceful and creative. What do you do for a living?"



"I'm a sportswriter."



"Well, that's certainly creative," she said patronizingly. 



And suddenly, I realized I had something important to ask her. 



"Um, do you see anything in there about taking Green Bay and giving 14?"



She looked at me like I was, well, a big ape. 



No, I won't tell you what she answered. 



It might affect the odds. I need them to stay exactly where they are. 





© Copyright 1997 The Washington Post Company