In an Unexpected Manner

(Reclaimed from Bubblews, where it appeared on July 22, 2014. Image credit (same shirt, different sizes): Puravida at Morguefile.com.)

Although this true story was brought to mind by the question at the end of Myqute 's horror story, www.bubblews.com/news/4771340-horror-the-fortune-teller039s-warning , this one's in a completely different mood...

Years ago, I was invited to a house party that lasted all winter. My boyfriend invited me, and his sisters invited their boyfriends, to stay at their parents' house in the city where we were working. His parents were professional foster parents and even had a foster grandchild that winter, and it must have been quite a winter for them, not being able to walk through a twelve-room house without stepping on a sleeping bag. Somebody would start a load of laundry before dawn, and the last load would be dried around midnight.

One evening somebody read a horoscope out of the newspaper. Somebody else pointed out that that was supposed to have been a message for the day that was now over. Then we all started checking what was supposed to have happened to us during the past day.

My horoscope said, "You could lose property in an unexpected manner."

Uh-oh! I didn't have much to lose! But I checked, and I didn't seem to have lost anything.

Next morning I started dressing for work. Something didn't feel right. I double-checked. Yes, something I'd put on was the same brand and color it had been before, but somehow the garment had grown a size overnight.

At least it hadn't shrunk. I went to work as usual. Nobody seemed to notice.

A few weeks later I wore the same outfit again, and one of the other young women in the house said, "Oh, that's what happened!" She had bought the garment I was now wearing--same brand, same style, same color, same store--laundered it, and thought she'd taken it out of the laundry. Needless to say, she'd got mine and I'd got hers. And since mine was a size too small for her, and she still had the receipt, she'd returned it to the store, where it was no longer in stock, and she'd bought something else instead.

How many times since then I've read what the horoscope in the newspaper predicted for some day that's already past, and seen no connection at all! But just once, on a day when we were all laughing at the irrelevance of our horoscopes, my horoscope's prediction came true...in a most unexpected manner.