Embedded Files
Mental Telepathy Stories from Youth
My Little Predictions
A Story That Can Hardly Be Believed
What is Time?
A Glimpse of a Previous Life?
A Young Persons' Perspective
The Last Carousel
and more
John Hall, circa 1946; about 8 years old.
Our phone was in what were called "telephone nooks" in those days. These were actually status symbols.
411 Woodland St., Ferndale, Michigan: I grew up in this house through the end of 6th grade. My mother's car, a 1946 Pontiac Coup.
John Hall's house on 6th St., Royal Oak, Michigan: about a 30 minute walk from our house.
Baltimore street near where this took place.
When I was young, beginning possibly at age 3 or 4, I had an amazing number of "deja vus," or the ability to subconsciously see things in the future. In fact, certain members of my family had an innate ability to "connect mentally" somehow, and we all took it for granted at the time. For instance, I always knew a few minutes ahead of time when my cousin John Hall was calling me on the phone (circa mid 1940s).
I lived at 411 E. Woodland St., Ferndale, Michigan, at that time. There were no zip codes yet. John lived with his parents in Royal Oak.
I remember sitting at the dinner table with my parents. We had an old
in-the-nook "8-party line" phone where I would often pick up the receiver only to hear Mrs. Murphy down the street talking to someone. She'd stop and say hello to me, and then I'd hang up and wait a while longer.
"8-party line" meant there were eight families all on the same telephone line. Any eight of them could be talking when you picked up the phone. This was very common in the 1940s.
Somehow I knew when John was calling me from about three miles away. I'd get up from the dinner table and go stand by the phone for a moment waiting for it to ring. When it rang I'd I'd pick up the receiver and start talking to John. It was normal for us and we thought nothing of it. This is what we did. During all the years we communicated like this there were no "false alarms." I knew for a fact that John was calling me.
We estimate there were about ten times he called me. It may have been more. I would get up from somewhere and would be standing by the phone when it started ringing. One time I just picked up the phone before it rang and we started talking. This was normal for us.
"Hi John: what are you up to...?"
The most incredible example of this happening took place in 1964. I was 22 years old at the time and at a music school in Baltimore. Walking past a phone booth in the winter on my way to an orchestra rehearsal, I stopped because I knew John was calling me. The phone rang. There was no doubt in my mind that it was going to ring, and it did. We were over 600 miles apart and we started talking again just like Royal Oak and Ferndale. I knew he was in Medical School at the time and he knew I was playing horn in the Baltimore Symphony. We caught up on old details. Neither of us thought this was unusual.
"John, what's going on in the Med School...?" "Oh yeah, I've got a rehearsal tonight..."
Note: since I had no phone in my apartment I'd given John the phone booth number. Then he'd call me at a prearranged time. This time, however, we hadn't prearranged a call. He just decided to call me and I was standing there waiting for it on a snowy street in Baltimore. Many years later we tried to figure out how we did this.
"My Little Predictions"
...that all came true.
Rochester High School 1958
Jon was on all the teams. I was in the band. We ran in different cliques.
Ray's Canoe Livery, Grayling, Michigan, where we rented canoes for the Au Sable River.
Us Boy Scouts getting ready to begin the trip, circa 1957. I am standing on the left. Names of others have been lost to history.
Scouts taking off down the river. I'm in the canoe on left, closest to camera.
We take a break and rest on the banks. My dad is in the foreground, then me, plus two other scout leaders.
And who did we find in the canoe ahead...???
Unbelievable.
Mary Ellen Hall, my maternal grandmother, standing on the beach at our family cabin in Canada. When this picture was taken in the late 1950s she told me about something she'd seen in the sky last night:
"I saw a star moving across the sky..."
She'd seen Sputnik with her bare eyes when she was 80 years old.
"My Little Predictions" may in some way be connected to the "phone call syndrome" which John and I had.
I often "saw things happening" in my mind that would then materialize right in front of me a few days later. I later heard it was called "deja vu," but at the time I called it "My Little Predictions." Here is one example that baffled me at the time - and even today - with it's complexity and "chances of actually happening." But it did happen.
We had a new student come to Rochester High School when I was in the 10th grade. His name was Jon E., and his family had moved to the Rochester area over the summer. I liked Jon. He was a good athlete, intelligent, and decent person. However he was a little bit "cliquish," hanging out with a small, select group in our class. I was on the outside of his group, so when he would talk to me he would be polite but standoff-ish. I wanted to break through that barrier somehow.
Towards the end of the semester our Boy Scout troop was going on our annual trip down the Au Sable River. No expressways in those days, we'd drive the old, colorful state highways through Standish and Roscommon before arriving in Grayling about 200 miles later. I thought I might ask Jon E. to join us on that trip where we'd all get a chance to know him better. I made mental pictures of us going down the river (I make mental pictures of everything). I imagined him enjoying such a trip because he was such a sports jock, but I also learned he wasn't an outdoors type like I was. Later I learned I wasn't allowed to invite him on the trip with us because he wasn't a Boy Scout like we were. I gave up on that idea.
A few weeks later our scout troop arrived in Grayling late in the evening, checked in at Ray's Canoe Livery, and left for our campsite about five miles away back in the deep woods. We pitched our tents, built small fires to warm up and celebrate the trip, then got up in the morning to begin canoeing for the next several days.
We'd paddled for several hours when we rounded a bend to see some other canoers gently resting out of the current. As we went by I waved and smiled and - Jon E. waved and smiled back at me!!
"What??!!" I thought. "He's here??? Jon E. is actually sitting in a canoe waving at me?? This is another of my little predictions of which I've had hundreds already!!"
The next several miles down the river were not seen by me. I was too engulfed in trying to figure out how I did this:
"It has to be a subtle thought where I'm not wondering if it's 'one of my little predictions' or not..."
I remember fearing that my grandmother would die, so I reminded myself to think about 'is this one of my little predictions' - which always insured that the thought I'd just had would not come true.
How in the devil did he manage to get to this remote spot - deep in the woods and hundreds of miles away - at the same time we did? And also, how did I actually see this image in my head several days before?
A Story Beyond Explaining
Bike trip route, over 800 miles with side trips. At one point, due to rain and weather, we rode a back woods train. We also, due to no place to stay, slept in a jail one night.
The house I lived in, 1961, Rochester, NY
Family cabin on Dunks Bay, Tobermory, Ontario.
Blue Mountain Lake in the Adirondacks
Moving Truck
Valuable recordings going out the door.
Church in downtown Rochester
Map of route from Tobermory, Ontario, to Rochester, NY: 340 miles
My mother, two years before this episode.
My parents, David & Mary Milne, in their cabin in later years.
The view from their cabin window.
At the start of summer of 1961, myself and a friend from the Eastman School of Music decided to ride our bikes from Rochester, New York, to Montreal, Quebec, and back again. We pushed off just before Memorial Day on a trip that would take us through the Adirondack Mountains to Montreal, and then back again along a different route. The distance involved was over 800 miles.
I informed my parents of our intentions and they were very supportive. They were just leaving for their cabin in Tobermory, Ontario (at the end of a 50-mile long peninsula into the Great Lakes), at the same time I was leaving for Montreal. My dad, a General Motors executive, would not allow a telephone in the cabin so that no one could call him up to say he was needed at some important meeting. (It worked, until one time when they sent a seaplane to pick him up off the beach). So my parents left for 300 miles up north in Canada for a well deserved vacation at the same time as Larry, my bicycle partner, and I left for Montreal.
I had been sharing a house with a roommate in Rochester for the last year or so, located about a mile from the Eastman School. The roommate decided to go home to Michigan's upper peninsula while I was gone on the trip. We both left and went our separate ways, agreeing to be back in a few weeks. Larry and I took off for the first part of our journey.
We passed through much beautiful scenery on this trip, including the historic Adirondacks Hotel in Long Lake, New York. (I would return to Long Lake many years later and performed annual concerts over the next twenty-three years). Larry and I reached Montreal with no problem and made it back to Rochester three weeks later. I was suntanned to the ultimate.
I came back into my house and began catching up on sleep which I'd missed when staying in Salvation Armies or being chased out of state parks by bears near Blue Mountain Lake. But we'd survived. Now I'd been home for about three days when I heard a knock on the door. It was 9:00 in the morning. I opened the door to find my roommate and the roommate's father standing outside. There was a moving van in the street and two burly guys setting it up to be loaded.
"We're moving out of here," said the father. "Get out of our way."
I was so stunned I couldn't react. The men from the truck came inside and started picking up everything in sight, including all my recordings collected over many years, the record player, speakers, couch, chairs, plus anything they could lay their hands on. I went hysterical, screaming and yelling, but everyone ignored me and just continued moving stuff out the door.
"That's my record collection! Take your hands off of it!"
No use. They just carried them out the door.
"What are you doing that's my table?!!!"
Out the door it went.
I finally went crazy and took off running and screaming through the streets of Rochester. Not having any idea what or why any of this was happening, I was crying uncontrollably while running, running, and running some more. Finally, after running for at least fifteen minutes, I saw a church in the downtown area. It was a Saturday and, not knowing even if it was open or not, I ran up the stairs, opened the door, then ran in and threw myself down in front of the altar, crying endlessly. After a long period of time I felt hands on my back. Then I heard a voice...
"Young man, my name is Father Van Fleet and I've come in the name of the Lord. I will help you. What is wrong?"
I tried to explain to him between sobs what was going on and he offered to help. I told him that he probably couldn't be of any assistance because I was dealing with evil people who had betrayed me and it would be a bad scene. Father Van Fleet insisted we go to see if he could help in any way. We got in his car and left. I was still crying uncontrollably.
When we arrived at the house I couldn't believe my eyes. My mother was in the middle of the yard pitching people across the grass like match sticks and screaming wildly. My dad was standing off to the side watching in amazement. Father Van Fleet and I also watched in amazement as the movers hastened to put stuff back into the house, things that belonged to me. My mother was kicking them as they went by and was in a rage like I'd never seen before. The roommate and father had been driven out into the street. After the truck emptied of my things and packed only with the roommate's, the truckers hurridly jumped into the cab and took off down the street. Roommate and father followed right behind.
My mother was standing there fuming. Her face had darkened considerably and she was so furious she couldn't talk. I went over to my dad. First question was,
"Dad, where did you guys come from? What are you doing here?"
He answered,
"Your mother woke up in the cabin at one o'clock last night and said,
"Bob's in trouble. We're leaving for Rochester."
I asked how that was possible. At one o'clock last night I was sound asleep, and these people wouldn't even arrive at my door until eight hours later. My dad replied,
"I have no idea how she knew. All she said was that she was leaving now with or without me, so I got dressed and came with her."
"Dad," I said, "Tobermory is 350 miles away. How the heck..."
"I don't know," he answered. "Somehow she just knew, and she was right."
I replied,
"She saw into the future somehow? And acted this decisively?"
"Apparently that's correct," he answered. "Apparently that is correct."
Following this my parents spent the next three days with me. We went on long drives into the countryside and visited scenic places. My dad and I attempted to recover during this time somehow, and I attempted to figure out just what in the world had happened. To this day it's beyond my understanding.
I don't know if my mother spoke more than ten words during those three days. She was fuming underneath and chose to remain silent.
I never asked her how she knew I was in trouble before it actually happened. What I had seen on that day was, in a manner of speaking, something from a different world. It seemed to me that my mother had seen through a time zone somehow.
I've never seen nor heard of anyone else ever doing anything like this other than Joan of Arc.
Note: years later I attempted to find Father Van Fleet and tell him about this, but was never able to make contact. Even when the age of computers and search engines came along 30 years later, I was never able to find him.
Addendum
What is time?
After having hundreds of "my little predictions" become true during my seventeen years on earth at that point, I began to wonder how this could be possible. The following thoughts occurred to me:
The human brain thinks in logical terms: 2 + 2 = 4, and such.
The human brain can not comprehend illogical things: What is the highest number? How far to the end of space? Where was I before I was born?
Therefore, to even attempt to know how to understand my little predictions we must first realize that it lies in an area that is not known to us, in an "illogical" area.
We look at time as logical, but it's not. For instance, there's no such thing as "now." This is true because during the time it takes to say "now" it has already gone into the past. "Now" is a very generalistic term, but in actual minutes or seconds there is no way to measure it.
From this we see that we have no concept of time. We only think of it in terms of "the future" or "the past."
This leads us to a question: what if time isn't actually going forward as we think it does? Suppose, if you will, that time is actually going backwards! - much like a fishing reel spinning out as you cast forward into the waters - and that things that have happened in our pasts are still deep inside our brains somewhere but relegated to inaccessible spots?
If this is true, even though it's beyond our complete understanding, then I had already seen Jon E. on the Au Sable River during that canoe trip. I subconsciously "remembered" something about it, causing me to want to invite him on the trip.
The innocent looking clocks that we have invented are actually lying to us.
This would explain the entire concept of deja vu - it already happened, and we can sense it somehow.
This would also explain how I knew John was calling me.
About 60 years after this incident I wrote an opera, the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, which involves the spirit world. These thoughts that I have just mentioned have been ingrained into me ever since I was a youth, so when I had to describe where the spirit world lived in the opera I wrote an aria about "time." It's based entirely on what I just described and I will include it below.
Plus, you can read about the opera elsewhere among my website pages by going to:
https://sites.google.com/view/bobmilne/the-legend-of-sleepy-hollow-opera
Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoyed this. "Time" aria is below.
If Time Became a Page...
If time became a page, invisible in air,
Then a thousand pages hang between me and over there,
If the pages turn like books then they turn where your eye looks,
But if not, then they float everywhere, in the air,
Do they start where books leave off, or end before they start?
Are the sands within the hourglass near, or more apart?
Or rolled into a circle, no forwards, backs or fronts,
So that spirits, me and ancestors all stand here at once.
A Glimpse of a Previous Life?
I remember things from shortly after I was born. For instance, I remember lying in my crib while still in diapers. My grandmother was babysitting me that evening, and I always loved it when she'd come into my room to be with me. But she was always busy doing other things in the house somewhere. My solution to the problem? All I had to do was wet my diapers and start crying and grandmother would be there in a flash. I remember being very happy when she was picking me up and changing the diaper.
I also remember learning how to talk, to speak English. I was learning words and sentences as any 3-year old would do, but also I kept hearing German phrases in my head as well. Somehow I knew it was German rather than Swiss, Austrian, or some other related language. I have no idea how I knew that. The phrases were very musical. In fact I heard some of them being sung and with instruments playing in the background. Realizing I was new to the world, only "having landed here" three years ago or so, I had no idea what these words in German meant. But I remember thinking to myself in the childhood innocence that everyone has at that age...
"Those are German words. I wonder if I lived in Germany last time..."
Today I wonder how I even knew about a country on the other side of the world. I find myself wondering if I actually did live in Germany "last time."
A Young Person's Perspective
This kitty was already alive when I was born. I grew up with her in our house in Ferndale. Later she moved to Rochester with us, pictured here at around 19 years old and resting in our Kleenex box as she always did.
When I was about 3 years old I remember lying on the rug, nose to nose with her. It was just on the other side of the windows to the right of our porch. We were staring into each others' eyes. I said to her,
"Kitty, you have claws but I don't. You need claws to do what cats do, like climb trees or catch things. I don't need to climb trees or catch things so I don't have claws.
"You have fur but I don't. You grow more fur when it's cold outside, then shed it later in the year. You do that because you can't put on a coat while still doing what cats need to do. I don't have fur because I can put on a coat.
"You have a brain that thinks in terms of what cats need to do. I don't. My brain thinks in terms of doing things that I need to do without claws, fur, and other kitty things.
"Cat, when you landed on earth you landed in that body, the one you're in now. When I landed on earth I landed in a different body, which is me right here.
"Cat, we are equals. You do what you need to do and no one can do it better. I do what I need to do as only a human can do. And I think everything else on earth is the same way. We all landed in different bodies.
"I love you, kitty."
Why Don't You Ask A Kid?
During my Ferndale years, 1942 - 1953, I attended Coolidge Elementary School. An interesting episode came up during my 6th grade class when a school administrator came into our room during a short recess and began talking about student activities with our teacher. Since I was standing right next to them I heard the whole thing.
Admin: "Mrs. Jones, can I get your ideas on some activities and books we're considering for the kids?"
Mrs. J: "Sure. What is it?"
Admin: "Well, we're thinking of..."
He proceeded to name six different items. I don't remember what they were, but one of those items was enormously more interesting than the others. But now they stood there discussing activities so boring I couldn't believe they were even discussing these. After a few moments I thought to myself...
"Why don't they ask a kid? They'll get the right answer immediately."
This little episode gave me an insight into something I never realized. The teachers and administrators couldn't relate to us. They had no idea what we wanted, and were discussing all kinds of stuff that we didn't want. How horrible. It made me realize that kids are smart, maybe smarter than many adults realize.
Many years later I learned just how smart kids really are. The American Indians had kids who were highly skilled hunters, or bow makers, or whatever the task at hand was. Kids could do it. Kids can also outrun adults and are far more agile.
I learned from a former champion that kids can play ping pong like nobody's business. Their reflexes are at top performance until age 17. Once beyond age 17 they become "old men" in ping pong and can't keep up. Hmm. Sounds like kids have something going for them.
And to top it off, I eventually learned that during the era of the "cave man," as we have come to know them," adults didn't live beyond the age of 18 when their reflexes weren't fast enough anymore to dodge the incoming predator.
So no wonder I wondered,
"Why don't they ask a kid?"
Maybe next time they will.
A Scene From Before I Was Born
The Last Carousel
This is a picture of a rotating wheel floating through the universe. I drew this picture in 2010 for a series of brain study interviews that were being conducted at the time. It somewhat resembled a huge grindstone, complete with the hollowed out section in the middle.
The earth is towards bottom right. A few stars sprinkle the scene. A weird looking circle with lines through it are near the top left.
The wheel could have been 50 or 5000 miles across and wildly thick. I had no concept of how big it was other than it was enormous. I also felt, as it slowly spun and tilted, that I should not go anywhere near it because its immense power would suck me inside itself and I would go along with it.
Many years later, thinking about this, I wondered if it was a scene from before I was born.
When I was a child, probably age 3 - 6, I had a recurring dream. I can only guess at how many times I had it, so I'll guess it was between 20 - 40 times. The dream was that I was sitting on a chair in space, looking down on a huge grindstone-esque wheel slowly traveling from right to left, and just as slowly tilting side to side as well. The chair I was sitting on was invisible. The earth plus a few stars were visible, plus a circle with some "squished" lines across its surface.
At some point in my youth I stopped having this dream, which I appreciated because it was a little bit fearsome to me.
The following pictures were taken in 2010 to demonstrate the distance and time involved in this event.
Bridge on I-94 in Detroit.
For this picture we had to drive slowly on the inside lane. I was two lanes to the left when this event happened.
Over 30 years later this dream came back to me, but it came back in a fashion I can hardly believe to this day. I was driving home from a piano gig in Dearborn circa 1975 when suddenly it appeared, this time in full force.
As I approached this overpass on I-94 the dream suddenly came back. I was in the outside lane when suddenly my head was filled with the dream image plus an orchestra playing a stunning piece of music I'd never heard before.
This picture was taken one second later in an attempt to demonstrate what was happening. I was hearing this music "all at once," meaning I was hearing all five sections of it at the same time.
This final picture was taken two seconds after the first. In the time it took to travel this distance I heard the entire piece - which is, in actuality, over six minutes long. This is how the dream "unfolded itself" to me.
Note: I have no idea how any of this happened. Now that I'm over 83 years old I'm trying to write this out so someday maybe someone will understand it.
This time the circle with five lines across it was in full focus. The "squished" lines nearby had suddenly expanded, as if they'd hatched after all these years.
And, amazingly, the orchestral piece I was hearing had five sections to it, with the longest section being in the middle, just like the circle is demonstrating.
This is a closeup of the first drawing shown above, highlighting the blurred lines of the circle.
When the dream was coming to me many years ago I didn't pay much attention to the circle. But when it crashed back into my head in 1975 it became overwhelmingly prominent.
At the end of the final stanza of the music I heard three lines of lyrics. They terrified me:
"Across the ground the great carousel
Heads homeward bound, as only time will tell,
So look around, you're on the last carousel."
All of this happened in the two seconds it took to drive maybe 50 yards at 70 mph.
Many years after this event, and after the invention of the Hubble Space Telescope, I saw this picture of the universe. This looks eerily like the "floating wheel" I saw in the dream, as well as the drawing I made which includes the recessed center.
This caused me to think that my dream was taking me back to before I was born, where perhaps I, as a spirit so to speak, was approaching a universe that contained earth in it.
I have absolutely no idea how any music could have exploded into my head from this episode.
Due to the bizarre nature of how this piece came to me, I was afraid to play it in public. The thought that I might be "on the last carousel" frightened me. I did, however, reluctantly play it for a few special people.
For special friends at their houses who insisted on hearing it. They said it was extremely beautiful. When they would request it in the places I was playing in I wouldn't do it.
A seafood house owner came to listen to me soon after I began playing in his place. I feared he was assessing my playing to see if he wanted to retain me as his piano player. Because my friends had encouraged me to play The Last Carousel so much, I inserted it into my performance that night for the owner. When I finished he was standing in front of me. He asked what that tune was so I told him the name. He asked who had written it, so I told him I had. At that point he turned to the full restaurant and announced his name and that I now had a job playing at his places for life. He was good to his word.
I never recorded the piece because of the fear.
An old friend asked me to play it at a music festival about 40 years after I'd written it. I'd played it for him back in 1975. Although an orchestrated recording was now available I still could not bring myself to play it myself. Dave T. then said, "Now I will have to die never having heard Bob play it in person again." He was well over 90 and died two months later. I regret this incident immensely.
After all the years of fearing to play this piece I finally, in 2010, decided to use it in dance scene in my opera, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Since the opera involves all kinds of unworldly spirits, this piece seemed to be the right choice. Since the only lyrics I had were the last three lines, I retained them in the score and wrote new lyrics for the previous 99% of the piece. You can hear it below.
This is the music that came into my head in a matter of two seconds. To repeat, I have no idea how that happened.
The cover for the dance scene in the Sleepy Hollow opera.
Piano Lessons
Other than very elementary lessons when I was young, I never took piano lessons. For some reason I knew how to play a piano. I thought that everyone could "simply play the notes they heard" any time they wanted.
I could hear the music in my head and simply trained my fingers to go to the notes I heard. For many years when I first became a professional I felt I was "cheating" because I wasn't working at a job like everyone else I knew. I was doing something too easy to be called "working."
I never practiced. For the first ten years of my professional life I didn't have a piano to practice on. I was doing roofing during the day, or installing water heaters. I'd listen to music in my head while doing this, then go to the Rathskeller that night and play it all for six hours or more.
In my college years I learned about "music theory." It confused me, because my own method simply related to the keyboard where every note was either "higher or lower than Middle C." All the memorization of confusing chords taught in the theory books was ridiculous once anyone realized there are only three basic chords in literally every piece of music, and small variations of those chords.
In later years I never practiced, fearing that it would erode my ability to play on high levels without practicing. I could play anything I wanted. If the technique evaded me the first time I would surely get it right the next time. I always played new pieces in front of audiences. Early in life I had thought this:
"People have told me I have a gift. Maybe I do, maybe I don't. I, however, will never say I have a gift. However, if I do have something special it is my duty to honor it every day by always trying to improve. I must not flaunt or otherwise 'show off'. I must never try to show anyone 'how good I am.' Instead I must show them how good the music can be. I tell my students to never focus on yourself. And remember that whoever gave you an ability can also take it away if you should ever insult such a privilege."
This mantra steered me through my whole life. So now maybe you can understand why I never practiced. Practicing would be only to learn, for instance, "fancy fingering" to make people say "wow." Practicing would also be an insult, telling my abilities, "I don't trust you to get me through this."
During my entire piano playing career the only time I ever felt like playing the piano was when people were there and I could share it with them. It's similar to,
"What's the sense of talking when you're sitting by yourself?"
As I write this out I face the challenge of explaining this to others. I hope I have, if anyone's interested. To me, however, I didn't have to analyze it as I just have. I simply followed the direction that life gave me and did things naturally as they came along. Practicing, in fact, never even occurred to me.
A Young Kid Tries to Analyze His Dreams
Dreams were often ridiculous, they made no sense. But then, years later, one of those ridiculous dreams would suddenly pop into my head. I figured that the dream must have something to do with whatever I was doing at the moment in order to reoccur out of nowhere like that.
I also wondered if the foretelling dream was a disguise to prevent me from knowing exactly what was going to happen in the future. I called it a "one to one ratio:" the dream would be about something bad happening but not about the actual bad thing that would in reality happen. The one to one ratio seemed to want to hide the true prediction from me so I wouldn't intercede and prevent it from happening.
For example, if I dreamed about being hit by a car on the street at 11:00 tomorrow, then I for sure would be hiding inside when that time rolls around the next day. If I'm programmed to be hit by the car, instead of dreaming about being hit by a car, the dream would be about walking through the woods and a tree would fall on me. These, and other thoughts of the like, were prevalent in my thoughts in those days.
From this I realized that My Little Predictions were possibly literally daydreams, events I was able to see that were actually in the future but were so subtle I didn't realize it. Or, I wasn't supposed to realize it.
Example:
I had a recurring dream that I was crawling up the side of a steep mountain at night towards the village lights high above me. Suddenly I came to the top of a peak where I couldn't go any farther because I'd gone up the wrong peak.
[ In the picture above, I'd gone up the center peak thinking I was on the peak to the left. ]
When I realized I was on the wrong peak I thought,
"How do I get there from here?"
About 40 years later I was a professional pianist and was playing in seafood houses at the time. I could play lightning fast in those days and challenged myself from time to time to "go for the limits." A crowd had gathered around me one time and was cheering me on. I decided to throw in a double-handed descending passage from the top of the piano to middle C, so launched into it. This was spontaneous, unrehearsed, like I always did. I never questioned that I'd do anything less than the best but really didn't know in advance what was going to happen. Just as I launched into it the dream of the mountain popped back into my head. It had a stunning effect on me.
"Where the hell did that come from? Why, after all these years, did it come back?"
After this happened many times, and always during high speed performances, I realized what had caused it. I was launching into something I'd neve done before and...
"How do I get there from here?"
This dream, as well as other dreams that revealed themselves years later, is what caused me to realize that:
1) Dreams are written in code. We're not supposed to understand them.
2) Dreams are literally projecting into the future, preparing and helping us deal with certain situations that arise.
To this day I try to figure out the disguised meaning in the dreams I have. Nothing in nature is arbitrary, and that includes dreams. But they come to us wearing costumes, cloaked in secrecy, and in languages we can't understand.
Old model cash register with green digital numbers
The Little Green Numbers
Old model cash register with paper flags
I lived in Ferndale through the end of the 6th grade before moving to Rochester, MI. Telephones in 1940s houses were becoming fashionable and the kids at Coolidge Elementary School were exchanging phone numbers. These phone numbers were very easy for me to see, or visualize. They were grey-against-black-backgrounds and all I had to do was look at the list of them when I wanted to call a kid on the phone.
But something new had come to town. The candy store at the end of our street had a cash register with the old cardboard numbers that popped up when you pushed the keys, but recently the store had something I'd never seen or heard of - a "digital" cash register. (First time I ever heard the word "digital.) The new cash register had green numbers on it, and I quickly learned that the phone numbers I could see in my head were much clearer if I simply changed them to green on black backgrounds. It worked perfect.
Then our family moved to Rochester, some 30 miles north, where I began the 7th grade. Phones were no longer a novelty and were now standard in everybody's homes. All my friends back in Ferndale were now in the rear view mirror and I was in a bigger school meeting all kinds of new friends. Naturally everyone was exchanging phone numbers.
"Hi Bob. Nice to meet you. We're having a basketball game later. Call me and I'll tell you what time and where." I'd ask what his phone number was. The kid would then scribble his phone number on a piece of paper and hand it to me. But I didn't need it because I could see it, so I gave him the paper back.
This suddenly backfired in my face. Soon all the kids in the school were making fun of me:
"Tee-hee! Don't write out your phone number for Bob because he's smart and can see them in his head! Tee-hee!"
This hurt me terribly, so I looked for a way to put a stop to this. Now I would let them write out their phone numbers on a scrap of paper but I'd put it into my pocket without looking at it. Soon after the giggling stopped.
I was totally engrossed with being in a new school. Here I was in an unknown school. I was 1st violin in the orchestra, I was learning new classroom lessons at a frantic pace, I was exchanging phone numbers (and putting them in my pockets), and there was a kid in the school who hated me and was always starting fights with "the new kid on the block (me). I hate fights, but Tom M. kept jumping me from behind and the fight was on. I severely kicked his butt every time but it was a terrible distraction from normal life. And then one day I slipped and fell of the fence during recess and broke my arm. I would wear a cast for the next six weeks.
As a consolation present my parents bought me a B.B. gun. (Yes, it was the same Red Ryder Carbine-action 200-shot Range Model Air Rifle just like in the movie with little Ralphie). So I waited out the six weeks, then had to deal with all the skin that had died under the cast during the time, and finally went to calling my friends on the phone. But something was gone. I couldn't see the green numbers anymore.
This was very upsetting. I feared a section of my brain had died during the broken arm trauma, so I searched and searched for why the green numbers had disappeared. Finally I found the answer:
When I put the piece of paper in my pocket I was subconsciously telling my brain I didn't need it anymore to remember numbers.
This was a blow in the face. How could I have done that to myself? I had no idea such a subtle suggestion could cause my brain to go to an area where it thought it might be more needed. However, this lesson came back to benefit my about ten years later.
At age 22 I was hired as a piano player at a German Rathskeller in Detroit. The place was packed every night with people singing old songs from the late 1800s-1900s. I didn't know most of those songs so told the people to sing it and I'd play it. This was something I loved doing every night. I would also hear other piano players play a tune that I liked, so I'd play it back on my gig the next night. There was nothing to it. I was playing songs heard on the radio, and the entire score to The Sound of Music that I'd learned from the singers in the Rathskeller. And then one night someone came in and handed me some sheet music...
"Hey Bob, this is a really neat tune. Take it home and learn it..."
I immediately remembered what happened when the students insisted they write out their phone numbers for me. It changed my brain, and I wasn't going to let it happen again.
I realized I could do something the other pianists couldn't do, play something back after hearing it once. I also realized I had to protect this ability, however it was that I was able to do this. So I would say Thank You and set their sheet music on top of the piano where it would stay indefinitely.
I maintained throughout my entire piano playing career of 60 years the fact that I would never look at music to learn it. I might be telling my brain...
"I don't need you for this anymore."
Postscript:
Many years later, when neuroscientists were studying my brain, I learned that a subtle suggestion to your brain such as I just described, does indeed influence your thought and memory processes.
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