<LAX – BNE |  02:21>

An interesting thing happened at L.A.X., about an hour before I boarded the plane. I was sitting on the floor, near the only electrical outlet by my gate, charging my devices when this older man who looked like he was from India, turban and all, glanced down at my hand and asked me if he could read my palm. I told him I didn’t mind- I figure that he wasn’t going to try anything weird since there were a lot of other people around. He took my palm and told me that he’d been professionally reading palms for the past 50+ years and that today was his 78th birthday.

Here’s what he told me he read in my palm: 

1. My spirit has been on this earth for about 3,800 years, reincarnated over and over.
   
2. There’s a good possibility that I will start to lose my memory at around 70 years old, but I’ll continue to live on to be very old.
3. I will never be rich, but will always be slightly comfortable and able to make ends meet.
4. I will have two more great loves in my life. One will stay with me, and the other will part ways with me.
5. I need to take up some sort of martial art to become more focused and become a better singer.
6. In my last life, I was an Italian woman who happened to be a lesbian.
7. About 300 years ago, I was in the body of a black man who lived in western Africa.

Do I believe everything this man told me? Absolutely not! Was it cool to have my first palm reading? Absolutely! One thing that did stick out to me was the fact that when I got my genetic testing done with 23andMe.com a few months ago, there was a very small portion of my DNA that came from western Africa. This man then went on to bash all forms of Christianity, that Jesus was only on earth to perform small miracles and wasn’t really the son of God. He told me that the only reason that my pastor taught me about heaven and hell was to control me. This man claimed to be psychic and there are quite a few things he got wrong about me. Still, it was cool to have my palm read. I just nodded my head, pretending to agree with him, and I smiled a lot. Harmless airport fun!

As I boarded the plane, I handed the chocolates to the lead flight attendant and told her she had to share them with her coworkers. I then told her that I was a flight attendant for Southwest Airlines and let her know that I’d be sitting in seat 61-A. She was very appreciative and several times during the flight, the other crew members came back to thank me. They were extremely kind and this move scored me a nice pair of noise-canceling headphones.

You want to know what makes a 13 hour and 55 minute flight seem even longer? This is when the guy who is two seats over from you decides to take his shoes off. He had no socks on and by the smell of things, he’d had to walk a lot that day in the California heat. It was not pleasant. Other than that, the flight was great! I tried to get some sleep on the way and think I may have managed to get about 2 hours in. For me, this is an amazing accomplishment.

Something very significant and awe-inspiring just happened. There’s a place over the Pacific where two invisible lines cross each other. This is where the equator crosses the international date line. Prior to a few minutes ago, I had never crossed either of these lines. I just crossed both of these lines… at the same time. In my opinion, this is very, very cool and I think it was worth powering up the laptop to record this event. Does this make me more of a man or a better person? I think so. Also, this is one step closer to considering myself a world traveler. Very cool!