Your Fortune: Humiliation

My husband and I were walking down the Las Vegas Strip. We were coming back from a show that was much farther from our hotel than we’d expected, so my feet were killing me and I was completely exhausted. I was just concentrating on putting one blistered foot in front of the other and getting back to the hotel so I could collapse.

The Vegas Strip is home to all sorts of fun and strange discoveries, and outside a shop, we spotted a Zoltar fortune-telling machine that looked like it had come straight out of the movie Big. We stopped to admire it for a moment, and I stepped forward to get a closer look.

The machine suddenly burst into life, moving dramatically and speaking loudly. I emitted some sort of strangled scream, jumped about a foot, and, in my exhausted and startled state, implored the machine, “PLEASE DON’T!”

My husband about fell over laughing at my reaction. When he had almost regained his composure, he noticed a pair of strangers that had passed us. The strangers were also laughing their heads off at me, which my husband was kind enough to point out to me.

Now that I’m far, far away from that stupid machine, I can laugh about the incident, too. And “Please don’t!” has become our reaction any time an object behaves in an unexpected way.