In the Stars

If and when I ever meet someone who takes a horoscope seriously, I will laugh at that person. In his face. And point.

And yet, while reading Glamour magazine, I find that I always go through the same silly little ritual. I invariably read my—in fact all—of the horoscopes, comment on how stupid they are and ask my roommates what kind of person bases any sort of decision, serious or otherwise on advice like “This month’s eclipse activity shifts your focus to career growth. Go for it Rams!” I find Glamourscope, as the magazine calls it, especially entertaining because, besides giving a general reading, it offers each sign in the Zodiac a “Do” and a “Don’t,” and Lucky/Lousy Days in three categories: career, love and well-being. If the general reading isn’t enough, one can always get out a planner and put a gold star next to the lucky love day (maybe my crush and I will totally make eye-contact in section) and a big red “X” on the lousy career day (I don’t even have a career. Wait a second, that’s pretty lousy).

I’m not really sure why I read the horoscopes because I know they’re always wrong and horribly vague. They offer unsubstantiated non-advice and reiterate the obvious. Oh, and they’re based on astrology. But without a doubt, whenever my Pisces reading is stupid (about 80 percent of the time) I simply skip ahead to another that I like more (usually Sagittarius) and claim it as my own. Though I will have forgotten the advice by the time I get to the next article, ad, or embarrassing trauma-rama of the week, I still go through the ritual of reading them until I find one that almost, kind of fits. And since they are all unspecific to a fault and don’t mean anything in my non-Glamour-reading life, I know I’ll never be disappointed and usually quite entertained.

True to form, I read this month’s horoscope and went through my silly ritual. Having just finished a stint with the illustrious weekend magazine FM, I was a bit wary of all that astrology had to offer, bogus or not. In our final issue of the mag, we side-stepped the pre-printed horoscope and went straight to a genuine mystic. We all asked her what was in store for our future and I became horribly distraught when she said I’d have three children out of wedlock. Children? Wedlock? What are these scary words and why did the mystic feel the need to throw them in my face? Couldn’t her little sparkly gold rocks tell her that I still get the hives from words like “deadline” and “graduate”?

With all of this astrological activity pointing in directions my little mind didn’t want to go, I could only cringe with disgust at the “Do” for fishies everywhere in the December Glamourscope. “Do make a wild New Year’s Eve resolution (yes, even ‘Get hitched in 2002’).” Whoa there, Glamour. I know this whole astrology thing is a big joke we inexplicably like to include in the morning paper and call 1-800 numbers about, but since when is it okay to slip a little tidbit like that into a harmless parenthesis. The reading “Do make a wild New Year’s Eve resolution” would have been fine, something I could label vague and generally inoffensive advice. A wild resolution could be anything from “start trying to decide how I’ll put food on the table in a few short months” to “stop wasting $3.50 on newsstand copies of Glamour magazine and then reading the horoscope.” But when the mystically challenged likes of astrologist Fiona Russell decided to add the thing about getting “hitched,” as she so tritely put it, she crossed the line.

I must say that I was pleased to see that the FM psychic and Ms. Russell disagreed; one predicted I would end up with three (she began by “feeling” one, but then went straight to three!) screaming brats before I had wrangled my baby-sauce maker into actually saying “I do” while the other urged me to resolve to say that small and scary sentence within the next few months.

On the other hand, what if the mystics aren’t giving me contradictory advice! Oh no, I can see it now! What if a bright white stork will drop a triple-sized bundle of joy in my cap-and-gowned lap as I sit through my much anticipated commencement ceremony this June. I’ll be a mother times three and with the mass of people crammed into Tercentenary Theater, I will have to scour the crowds and rope myself a hubby, Texas-rodeo style.With the mass of people crammed into Tercentenary Theater, I'll stealthily scour the crowds looking for an unsuspecting spectator and pounce like a cat with three hungry mouths to feed. Realizing that my brand new diploma really is worth its weight in gold--ha ha sucka, fools gold that is!--I will leave the fairy-tale land of undergraduate life with a screaming three-headed bundle on my back and a dazed, weakened man dragging behind me, still confused about why he blacked out after the Band began its rendition of Ten Thousand Men.

Though I pride myself on being the sort of girl smart enough not to take astrology seriously, the sort of girl who can recognize the entertainment factor at work here without putting any faith in the stars, it is quite easy to get all worked up when this particular source of entertainment begins encroaching on that part of my life which is no laughing matter, especially now. With babies and hubbies hovering scarily in the astrological world it's a good thing that I don't subscribe to all that nonsense.

And an even better thing that the "Do" predicted for Virgos in this issue of Glamour is more to my liking. "Do have fun." See there, a simple imprecise horoscope that will apply nicely to you, me and the 219,000 other people who read it and take the whole business, of course, with a grain of salt.

Antoinette C. Nwandu ’02 is an English concentrator in Cabot House. Her column appears on alternate Mondays.