clairvoyance or poppycock?

The other night I attended a charity event where they were offering free psychic readings. I've only had "energy" work done in the past, so most of my psychic knowledge has come from tales of friends' readings. During my freshman year of college, a friend's mom got her fortune read and warned my friend that she'd definitely be pregnant by our senior year, Not a particularly fun message for a mother or my friend to hear, and alas it didn't come to pass. Who's to say that's because she wasn't extra careful due to the warning - another "the chicken or the egg scenario." A different friend in college got her fortune read in Salem at Halloween-time. She plunked down $60 buckaroos hoping to hear the whole enchilada of her destiny but instead the psychic started yammering on and on about her beautiful her necklace was, guessed where she got it (she guessed wrong), and my friend demanded her money back mid-session. 

Needless to say I was somewhat intrigued, but clearly dubious of the whole psychic phenomenon. However, if you're gonna go ahead and offer me a free psychic reading I'm gonna take it (hell, if you're gonna offer me a free pretty-much-anything I'm gonna take it. This is why supermarkets with free bakery samples are my favorite places on earth). The psychic at the charity event was an elderly British woman, or perhaps an American with a fake British accent to make her seem more legit. 

I sat down at her table and she started laying the tarot cards down in front of me. The first card she put down had to do with relationships and apparently it was clouded by a big question mark. She couldn't be sure if the relationship was the romantic type or work type, but either way it wasn't looking good. As she continued to lay down cards she kept telling me cryptic messages like "this looks messy, or you know what I'm talking about but I don't want to spell it out for you here, because we're at a formal event (wink wink)." By golly woman spell it out for me! No I really don't know what you're talking about and you're really starting to freak me out. How bad could it be that you can't say it out loud? Most of what she said made semi-sense but I think the same reading could've been loosely applied to anyone with a pulse. 

As I was getting up from the table, a little shaken, her last words to me were that I've been a "naughty girl." Is that really appropriate (or necessary) psychic talk? My friend got her's read too, and was also a little more worried about the status of her life and relationship than before she sat down. It got me thinking about a few things. First, I wanted to tell this high and mighty Brit that I think her line of work is rubbish. Second, how much of our lives are self-fulfilling prophecies where we hear what we want to hear and then make that happen. Let's say my friend heard the psychic say she would have problems with her boyfriend and then picked a fight with her boyfriend, is that because it was going to happen anyway, or because the psychic got in her head. Finally, even if there is some truth to knowing part of my future, I'm not sure I want to. Where is the fun in that, really?