The Empowered Lifestyle

This whole weekend was one big back and forth as to whether we were going to go see 'Paranormal Activity' or not. Well, first we had to go to the local High School Homecoming football game, not because I live in the South and it IS Friday Night Lights. But, because one of my best friend's sons, Carter Willcox, was nominated as King of the Court and she was going to escort him onto the field at halftime and asked a bunch of us to go. It was TOO TALL FUN and so reminded of days gone by that I haven't thought about in a loonnnnnng time. We went out after I dropped the boys back home and the Falcons decidedly won their homecoming game. It was sweet.

And when I did finally get home, the boys informed that they wanted to go see 'Paranormal Activity' the next day. I agreed as long as this time I could sit with them (usually I have to go to an entirely different movie, which is, usually, NO skin off my schnozz...I mean, did you see the last Bruce Willis movie? Suckogate? THE BOYS LOVED IT!) Anyway, Saturday was GORGEOUS and I had a boatload of stuff to do, so, promised them I would take them late afternoon / early evening. But then Griff couldn't go and Tammy's daughter was going to the homecoming dance and they wanted to drop by and borrow a Ferragamo for the event and I wanted to see her before she went off to her FIRST HIGH SCHOOL DANCE.....OMG, I'm THAT old...I'm super excited about friend's kids going to their first hs dances! YIKES! But they did stop by and that was really sweet too! And Katie looked..well...radiant is the best way I can put it. Just radiant. It was like the perfect weekend. Late Saturday, after Tammy took Kate to her friends' house, Louis and Riley stopped by to watch football with Grayson. I didn't really want to read my book anyway. Because you know, 'watching' football actually means reenacting each play, in the four by four bedroom the boys LIVE in when they hang here.

But Riley wanted to know if I would teach him to dance before Ring Dance. Said that was why he wasn't at Homecoming. And also added that he needed a suit and a date. I can help him with first two, but thinking Mrs. Robinson should stay away from that third agenda? Right? Anyway, we decided to all go see 'Paranormal Activity' on Sunday until Jake decided he was too scared and my own son said he didn't think he wanted to see it "on a Sunday, in case he couldn't sleep afterward, because, you know, there's school on Monday." Yeah welcome to my scary world of no sleep on Sunday nights.

So, we never made it to the spooky movie but it did get me thinking about my own Paranormal Activity that I've experienced my ENTIRE life. I'm sooooo grateful and glad that my son doesn't experience these same things that I did. Even at his age. Now, because it's Halloween week, I'd thought that maybe I'd share one or two of these events? What say? You in?

Okay, once upon a much younger time, while I was working on Wall Street running the Commodity News Department for E.F. Hutton, I was also subletting an illegal sublet in a lower Eastside division called Stuyvesant Town. Sty Town, as it was known, was/is made up of a bunch of buildings that all have large one and two bedroom apts that are rent controlled so if you're able to find one to sublet, you're pretty lucky 'cause they're usually MUCH cheaper than anything else you can find in NYC. I lived there for awhile with someone who's name we will NEVER mention, but, then, when he moved out I found that I couldn't afford the space on my own....so.....(are you following me here?) I moved into my sister's studio on East 79th and York while she moved in with her boyfriend and I sublet the Sty Town place. Loooooong story short, I eventually had to kick the renters out because they NEVER payed the rent and when I went to see the apt for the first time since they moved out, it was...well....S C A R Y!

They ahd pushed all the furniture back against the walls and piled it all up on each other. Because in the middle of the NOT FAKE wooden floor of the large living room they had drawn, in chalk, a HUGE pentagram. You know, the kind that witches use. Now, back in the day, I wasn't that familiar with Wicca but I knew evil when I encountered it, and, well, I was encountering it then. I was with my friend Fred who was a gov't bond trader at Hutton so, you'd think he'd have a set of balls...but the minute he saw the pentagram, he was out of there like Jumpin' Jack Flash! He said he's be at the elevator waiting for me. It didn't help that we were there late at night either. But I just needed to go through the rest of the apt to survey any other damage and what I'd have to do about it all. What I found was so disgusting that I won't go into it all here on a Monday morning, but, I will share one thing......there were dead animal skins hanging on EVERY door, by a nail, inside the whole apartment. YUCK. And BOO!

Okay, so fast forward and I get a bunch of my friends to come in and help me clean but I keep some of the girls clothes until they pay me back the rent. That was soooo NOT a good idea because a few nights later while I was sleeping back at the haunted hacienda, I woke in the wee hours of the morning to hear some chanting going on outside my bedroom window. I am sooooo not making this up. I got up and sort of wiggled over to the window and looked out so nobody could see me, but, there, down below, were a group of black caped and hooded what? witches? staring up at my window and chanting some sort of goobledy gook. One of them saw me...probably because I then turned whiter than a ghost and must have looked like a beacon....and they all started chanting louder and louder.

I went back to bed and did what I always do when I'm lying in bed and scared crapless...I rolled over on my stomach, squished my face as far into the pillow as I could without suffocating and pulled the covers up over my head. I was shaking and shaking and one of my legs was actually almost kicking up and down and up and down. That is, until I felt "someone" sit on the side of the bed thisclosetome and then put a strong hand down on the jumping leg! To stop it from moving! I heard breathing but would NOT, WOULD NOT, turn to look and see "who" was there.

I know this is going to sound crazy, but, I laid there, frozen, for so long that I finally fell asleep. I know! How could I fall asleep? I don't know, but, I know that I didn't move one single inch that entire night until the sun came up. At which time I was left alone to ponder whether ALL of this had really happened. It had. The one thing I can say is that I didn't know then that when in trouble like that you're supposed to call on Michael The Archangel to come and surround you with protection. In fact, you're also supposed to invoke Jesus the Christ as well. Three times. Either or both names...three times...just like this..."I invoke the protection of Saint Michael the Archangel. Michael, I invoke your intercession....Michael, I invoke your intercession...Michael, I invoke your intercession (three times...see...using the words 'invoke' and 'intercession'...he'll come and he'll come with tons of supportive and defending angels as well!)

I didn't know that invocation then. Or that evil cannot stay in the presence of holy light. I just knew that I was scared shitless and never wanted to sleep in that apartment again. But, I did. And you won't believe what happened next.................