42

I was told by two different psychics that I would be dead at age 42. They would be the first to say that they were not psychics. They were transcendental transition guides or previous existence facilitators or some such bullshit. They were psychics. Why I spoke to these two people on two separate occasions is a story unto itself, but this is not that.

As the fates would have it, I was John Kennedy in my last life. Everybody is always someone famous in a past life. No one ever seems to be a dirt farmer or the guy who invented measles.

Delving into the spooky dust to uncover my noteworthy past was a fairly simple process. It is all about numbers.

Kennedy died seven years before I was born. According to some, your ghost needs to rest for seven years before possessing some other sucker. Kennedy’s last name has seven letters, as does mine. Both of our names begin with consonants and are immediately followed by vowels. They end the same way, assuming that Y is a vowel.

Kennedy was born in 1917. I was born in 1970. He was born May 29 and I was born May 31. This discrepancy can be easily explained since I was born very early in the morning, practically on the 30th and he was born late on the 29th. If you adjust time zones then we were practically born on the same date.

Needless to say, but said nonetheless, we are both Geminis. Gemini is the twin sign.

John was commonly called Jack by his friends and family. My first name can also be shortened to a four letter nickname.

Kennedy’s first wife had a French name spelled the French way rather than the more common English way, as did mine. If you combine their names, you get a famous author, though I doubt this has any bearing on the case.

The president and I have similar medical histories, although I have yet to injure my back in World War II. Kennedy was pronounced dead three times in his life. I am still working on number one.

Taking all of this and the fact that Kennedy died at 42 into consideration, and crunching the numbers, it was determined that I would die at 42.

What none of the psychics knew and I only thought about later was that Kennedy had a childhood friend that he knew for the rest of his life named Lem while I have a childhood friend named Ken. Both of their initials are the same (Lem is a nickname). Lem was the third child to a man named Fred and a mother with British ancestors.

It might be irrelevant to my fall from world power, but it was an open secret that Lem was a flaming homo. One of my temporary lady companions once told me that Ken was “as gay as disco”. Her source was his wife, whom she claimed had claimed that Ken could not function as a man unless he was with other men. It might be worth noting that this particular temporary lady companion was a compulsive liar who told me that one of the cashiers at our local grocery store was her best friend despite the fact that this cashier had no idea who she was.

Ignoring that reincarnation is supposed to let us move on to a higher state of existence and that going from President of the United States to me is probably a step or two in the wrong direction, there are a few flaws in this theory.

Both of our last names indeed have consonants followed by vowels, as do most family names in the English speaking world. Both of our last names have seven letters, but his full name was John Fitzgerald Francis Kennedy. Mine is considerably shorter.

It is true that I was born very early in the morning, but Kennedy was born at 3pm Massachusetts time. Adjusting for time zone differences, our birth dates are 37 hours apart. That is not the same day by any definition.

We are both Geminis, but according to Chinese signs, he was born in the year of the snake and I was born in the year of the dog.

Our first names can be abbreviated into shorter nicknames. He was commonly called Jack. No one at any point in my life has ever called me by my four letter abbreviation. I would not even know that someone was talking to me if they did.

Our wives had absolutely nothing in common.

I was supposed to die at 42 because of the numbers and the fact that Kennedy died at 42. Except that he was 46 when he died.

It only occurred to me after I typed this up that I am 43 years old in my current time zone. In the United States, where I was told that I would die at 42, I am still 42. I suppose we will have to wait and see what happens.