This evening I was killing a bit of time at a coffeeshop before class. A woman walked up to me, introduced herself as a meditation leader at one of the local sanghas, and proceeded to ask me if she could bask in my, and I quote, “soothing yellow aura” for a few minutes to ground herself.

I didn’t have the heart to tell her my aura probably wasn’t going to ground her tonight, but it might grind her into little shards seeing as I was cranky. Really cranky. To say I was feeling less than charitable towards my fellow humans this evening would be a gross understatement. At the risk of putting too fine a point on it, I’d venture to describe my mood as a wee bit homicidal.

I certainly wasn’t going to tell her that, she seemed so happy to have found me.

The freaky part wasn’t that this happened. It was that this has happened to me before.

Many times.

Not the feeling homicidal part – the part where people want to dwell in my alleged buddha-nature.

Tonight’s encounter reminded me of one that happened in March 2003 in the coffeehouse that was next to my old office, except this woman seemed to be sober and intensely serious.

I hope she found what she was looking for.

In the event you were unaware of this small fact, let me be the first to tell you that I am a very powerful freak-magnet. (What this says about you as a reader, I leave to your own interpretation).

I vowed recently to ask the next person who approached me to explain what drew them to me. I was determined to get someone who had randomly told me a deep dark secret, asked for my autograph, put a curse on me, asked me to marry them, or otherwise seemed to be drawn to me for no apparant reason to explain this whole thing to me.

I’m generally non-confrontational, however, so I was 3 freaks into today before I finally got up the nerve to ask. Since I was engaged in the conversation, I couldn’t take notes, but this is roughly how it went down:

Cutefreakboy approached me outside a coffeeshop and began making random smalltalk.

Cutefreakboy:
(Random smalltalk).

Me:
(Random smalltalk in return).

Cutefreakboy:
(More random smalltalk).

Me:
(Something noncommital).

Cutefreakboy:
You’re really cool.

Me:
Um. Thank you.

Cutefreakboy:
Do you know Kara?

Me:
Not that I know of. Do I know you from somplace?

Cutefreakboy:
No. I just thought you might know her.
She’s cool too.

(long silence, but it is apparent he’s never going away)

Me:
Can I ask you a question?

Cutefreakboy:
Sure.

Me:
No offense, but what made you come up and start
talking to me?

Cutefreakboy:
What do you mean?

Me:
Did you think you knew me? Do you like talking to strangers?
Why of all the people milling around here did you approach me?

(I was more polite than that, but that was the gist)

Cutefreakboy:
(leaning in, earnestly)
The truth is, it’s your aura.

Me:
Pardon?

Cutefreakboy:
You have good energy. It attracted me.

Me:
Good energy?

Cutefreakboy:
Yeah. You have a strong yellow aura.

Me:
Yellow?

Cutefreakboy:
Like the Buddha.

Me:
Like the Buddha?

Cutefreakboy:
Only the most enlightened people have yellow auras like yours.

(I ponder this for a moment and then politely ask another question).

Me:
Are you high?

Cutefreakboy:
Yeah. (Looks around) How did you know?

Me:
It’s your aura.

plucked from the ashes of the punkprincess.com archives, reposted 02-28-07