I've Been Thinking...

I've Been Thinking...

The most interesting person I ever met

A tale about a sudden psychic

Elizabeth Berg's avatar
Elizabeth Berg
Apr 29, 2024
∙ Paid
photo of man wearing brown sun hat
Photo by Mika Ruusunen on Unsplash

The other day, someone asked my sweetheart, “Who’s the most interesting person you ever met?” It took him a long time to answer. Finally, he looked over at me and said, “Buckminster Fuller?”

I hiked up my shoulders. It seemed to me that my opinion was of no value whatsoever. That was a question he and only he could answer. I was not asked the same question, but an answer came to me right away, anyway.

When I was 9 years old and living in Texas, I was out walking one day when I came upon an older man wearing a straw hat, sitting in a circle under the shade of a tree with bunch of kids. He was holding a deck of cards (dirty hands, dirty cards, I noted happily) and his audience was enraptured.

I had set out that morning with a Mason jar in order to capture a horny toad for the purpose of having a close up view. Their faces interested me, especially. They looked crabby. Or maybe I was wrong, maybe they looked wise. I intended to find out. After I was through inspecting the horny toad, I was going to set it free, and I imagined it running home (What did a horny toad HOME look like?, yet another burning question) and saying, “She didn’t kill me! She didn’t kill me!”

Anyway, I came upon that circle of kids and that older man and I walked slowly over.

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