Autobiography (1): "Smile! Your Life is on a Cosmic Camera!"

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Mitch versus the World & Mitch-Tripping the Universe – or how I learned I was a Cosmic Lightning Rod of Unexpected Events

    Take my word for it—or listen to people who know me: strange things happen to Mitch.  Lenny “Blackhorse” dubbed it “Mitch-Tripping” when we were teens as a way of describing the sheer comedy of bewildering circumstances that surround my life.  Things just don’t happen quietly.  If anything to the contrary, it’s somewhat like being in a cartoon show—which is why I say that Jim Carrey’s The Truman Show, about a guy whose entire life is on film and pre-designed as such, is just how I live.

     I’ve held a variety of jobs, from limo driver to college instructor to salesman, been fired from more positions than I remember, and was able to attend graduate school after being turned down by four institutions.  I also have learned that writing is a tool that can make doors open and magic appear:  I wrote a paper as an undergraduate psychology student at Rutgers that featured my research methods graduate instructor, a young kid trying to earn a few extra dollars—and he was the topic of the assignment I did.  He didn’t have a clue on what I wrote nor how I came to my conclusions and statistical results because I used my astrological knowledge—and he had no understanding of it.  The final presentation was hung in “the hallway” as a sign of prestigious effort—and none of the senior Ph.D.’s knew what I had written either.  I also worked in sales after overcoming fearful stage fright.

I also study and teach psychological astrology. That’s another asset:  I can delve deeply into the psyche of a person I’ve never met in person, describing them in detail, much to their amazement and surprise.  And I’ve made it clear to my family that the reason my ears look somewhat “pointed” is because I’m quite sure I have lived in many past lives via reincarnation—and that I possess DNA remnants in my body from prior lives as a being from other planets and galaxies.  So welcome aboard the Cosmic Comet that travels through this world and beyond—and may your journey be one of amusement and astonishment.  But don’t fret:  you’re safe—unless you choose to be associated with me.  Then the rules are broken, and there’s no telling what or who you may meet with me, and not necessarily in human form.

Still don’t believe me?  Just think of what happened to a friend.  I sent him “Mitch versus the White Whale” to read, which caused him to laugh so hard that tears ran down his eyes.  Up came his little daughter, concerned that Daddy was sad because he was crying.  No, no, he said, trying to reassure her—everything is fine—which then caused him to break out into further helpless spasms as he imagined my distress as a limo driver on an assignment in Atlantic City’s back streets.  And so it went in a continuing circle:  the daughter trying to cheer her father from what she imagined was pain, and he in turn trying to calm and comfort her that he was quite fine and pleased at Mitch’s mayhem, but unable to keep a straight face.

Okay, then.  You just go ahead with your life—but I’m sure that somewhere, a movie screen is showing “This is Your Life” and I’m the main attraction.  I know that it’s true.  Just bring me extra popcorn for my viewing—and off you go on the Mitch-Tripping Comet.

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"Aliens have come for you at last, Mitch—but you weren’t home"

 So in 2008, when I owned a small farm down in Boaz, Alabama, my next-door-neighbor hollered at me from @100 yards away to come on by for a barbeque one night, and me and the wife did so. And knowing that we had been gone on a short trip, we asked him to watch over our place.

So he told us that aliens had visited our pasture—and his wife chipped in and verified it to be the absolute honest truth. I was stunned—like I had been slammed right in the solar plexus. They had FINALLY come to make contact with me and didn’t even give any notice? I was beyond shock-and-surprise, and if I didn’t know this was a chance to tease me as a Yankee-relocated-down-South, I would have sworn I was being set up. (They tried that once: “Go on a snipe hunt—and leave your shoes before you go on the woods so you won’t make noise and scare it away.” I knew what that meant: steal my shoes and laugh when I came back.)

So there I was on their back porch, eating and trying for all it’s worth to figure why aliens had dropped in without even a call from Steven Spielberg. Or George Lucas. And husband-and-wife both said the same thing: “They had long swaying necks. We could see ‘em from here.”

I came to find out later that some black swans from the farm adjacent to us had been staying near the pond where the cows came to drink, and for some reason, those same birds had decided to march off and go into our pasture. And of course, they had long necks and…and…well…I was still disappointed that I didn’t get any invitations for a ride on a spaceship.