The faux Gypsy

Every year the PTO, the Parent Teacher Organization would host events including the Halloween Carnival at the local Junior High. The money raised would be used for scholarships.  Once, when I was elementary age, my mom took us five kids to the carnival.   I remember games and prizes all set up in the gym and cafeteria.  Some of the class rooms included a cake walk and haunted maze. I always wanted to win a cake.  It was fun for little kids and my brother and older sister enjoyed the games as well. Especially since they were allowed to play and roam without the supervision of my mother. My mother gave them their own tickets to play. Me and my two younger sisters stayed with my mother and played kid games like the treasure dig and duck pull or throw darts at the balloons.  These were simple games where you dug in the sand for prized or picked a floating duck that had a prize number on the bottom.  We got our stuffed toys and moved on to the next activity, giving up tickets for each time we played. 

My mother stopped in to see the fortune teller.  It was really just a teacher wearing a gypsy costume and long black wig. She would read your palm and say things like “you will have a long journey soon”.  My mother paid the ticket and placed her palm on table and then in the hand of the faux gypsy.  We sat outside the curtain in class room chairs and waited for mom’s reading.  I could hear the conversation and see though the sheer drape.  The gypsy started. “You have a long life line, see here as it crosses your palm?” She traced the fold of my mother palm.  So far so good, I thought. “And you will go on a long journey soon. “  We knew that one was coming; she seemed to say that to everyone. “You are wise and smart.” She continued.” But I see here, you are skeptical.” And mother was after all this was just pretend. We knew that.

  “ah ha!” she said with an exciting pause,  ”I see here you have three children.”  My mother was playing along and obviously unconvinced.  The woman seemed to be searching my mother palm again.  But my mother replied without missing a beat.  “Well you better check the other hand, because I have two more children somewhere!”  She quickly turned her wrist and placed the other hand on the table.  The genuine laughter broke the short silence between the actress and my mother.

my mama  Wendy Castillo Flores

Yes, my mother has made the gypsy woman smile and laugh out loud and most of all break character.  This story still makes me smile when I remember it. We enjoyed the carnival, and the fortuneteller booth was the best price of a ticket ever spent.