Morning in America: Scorpio Rising

Last week I received some very disturbing news. But first I need to go back to the year 1980: when Post-it Notes first hit the newsstands, the US Hockey team beat the USSR, John Lennon was assassinated and Ronald Reagan was not, and I was in the sixth grade.

One day in 1980, I walked into the Valley Oak Elementary School library (not an uncommon occurrence) and, being well-versed in the Dewey Decimal System, made a beeline for the card catalogue. I was curious about myself and wanted to know more about what made me the Lisa H. I knew and was so vaguely ashamed of for myriad reasons. Under the SUBJECT HEADING “Astrology.” I found a book that seemed relevant to my many questions and worries. Back in the stacks, behind the display of macaroni and bean mosaics depicting tragic scenes from the story of the Donner Party made by the snotty fourth-graders in the gifted-and-talented class, I furtively rifled through the pages of A Child’s Garden of the Occult until I came to the chapters “How to Care for Your Moon Sign” and “Rising Signs: The Straight Dope.”

Although I was still a tad naive at age 11, I understood the world well enough to know that I shouldn’t check the book out, and thereby incur the suspicions of the librarian, who no doubt would inform the Principal and his Office cronies, and send me home with a note pinned to my jacket suggesting my mother make an appointment with Mrs. Cooley, the District psychologist.

So I carefully made notes about how to calculate these important but too-often-ignored elements of zodiac, which are crucial to understanding the emotional, social, and intellectual subtleties of one’s life. The book indicated that these features of my astrological chart would be determined by the time, latitude, and longitude of my birth; my parents’ net income; my social security number; and the names and personal information of any living siblings. (I am an only child but back then I did have an entire group of imaginary relatives: the Lou family, a happy group of six of stick figures with whom I happily shared my days … and nights.

I sent this information to the author as instructed, and after 6-8 weeks received a document in the mail stating that my Moon Sign was Libra (“the Scales”), my Rising Sign was Sagittarius (“the Archer”), and that any further contact with the author or his publisher could result in possible litigation.

For the last 25 years, I’ve been dutifully reading these two horoscopes, in addition to Cancer (“the Crab”), for daily guidance and counsel, which I have come to depend on in times of great need – when my father died, when I had to undergo a series of rabies vaccinations after handling a sick bat, and especially, several years later, when mysterious charges began appearing on my credit card statements, including $8,000 for a warehouse of Army surplus t-shirts emblazoned with “I Got Lei’d in Maui,” and exorbitant amounts spent at an Arby’s in suburban Nashville. However, some aspects of my zodiac identity continued to nag at me. For one thing, it was unclear as to whether or not the author had known if Daylight Savings Time (“DST”) was cancelled the summer I was born because of the war (as I mentioned before, time of birth is fundamental to mapping the astrological chart). For another, was the fact that my father was notoriously gassy in any way relevant? For some reason, something just seemed off about the whole enterprise.

Then, last week, I had a thought. The thought was: back in 1980, there were no so-called “internets.” It was the olden times: in primitive and futile attempts to learn, people read books. But this is the 21st Century. Now, through the miracle of information technology (“IT”), I can access some or most of the world’s knowledge on a computer, for a nominal fee. So I simply Googled “Moon sign,” and “Rising sign” and “Arby’s Nashville 1969.”

What I discovered is that a terrible fraud has been perpetrated upon me for a quarter of a century. Not only is my Moon in Sagittarius and my Rising sign (“Ascendant”) in Scorpio, but I do not seem to have a valid social security number, and the name on my birth certificate may not be “Lisa H.” (“me”). Now everything makes sense: the lifetime of tragic misunderstandings, the unceasing personal drama, the crushing loneliness, the all-nighters at Arby’s. And most of all, it explains why I’ve always had a special place in my heart for gay Nazi bikers and underground film. Ask anyone.