I’m sure everyone had their own story, which I didn’t have enough time to listen to since I was on a tight schedule each time I worked, and conversations didn’t necessarily flow so easily at every stop. My new friend Patti herself said that she had lived in Waukesha her entire life. I couldn’t imagine being in one place that long and not experiencing another place for more than a few days at a time. I had too much wanderlust in me for that.

One night Patti invited me to meet her at the bar where I first met her in Waukesha. I was a little nervous about going back there considering my cousin almost accidentally ran her over, and Annie the bartender was not happy about it. What a memorable first experience in the small city. It definitely made its mark in my memory.

Annie was bartending again, but so was another young woman about the same age. I greeted everyone and had to get things settled in my mind.

“You’re not gonna kill my cousin the next time he comes in here, are you?” I asked Annie.

“No….unless he does it again. Then we may have a problem,” she replied.

I assured her it was an accident, and she seemed to accept that answer, though she was kind of hard to read sometimes. It was hard to get any emotional response out of her as well, as she seemed a bit unemotional and aloof, and I took it as almost a personal challenge to get her to smile or laugh, but did my best not to reveal my intention.

The other bartender’s name was Nicole. She had a much different personality. She was a lot easier to understand on an emotional level and didn’t seem as mysterious as Annie.

Over time and a few drinks, people can sometimes begin to open up a bit more. I found out that Patti’s birthday was the day before mine!

Having studied astrology for 24 years ever since my last year of high school, I’ve begun to notice some patterns within it. In astrology, all of the planets, including the moon, embody different energies and personality traits depending on where they fall within a person’s individual horoscope. These positions represent strong tendencies, but are not compulsive, as free will always determines a person’s actions. Anyone can decide to act “out of character” at any time they want, or they could grow so much during the course of their life that they don’t much resemble what was reflected in the planets at birth, which would be extremely rare, though sometimes even the changes can be measured by a different branch of astrology.

I always found great rapport with people who were born within a few days of me like Patti, and it made perfect sense to me now why I befriended her so easily. In astrology, it would mean we had the aspect called Sun conjunct Sun. The sun represents the self, not the face we show the world, but the real person behind the mask. Having the sun in such close proximity with another person’s would mean that each person's sense of self resonates strongly with the other and is strongly reflected in the other. This can be distinguished from thinking the same as the other or having the same habits, but it can definitely occur.

One great example of this in my life was with a girl named Courtney who worked at a vitamin store I used to go to. From the first time I met her, I sensed there was an energy about her, then when she looked at my ID card when I was opening an account with them, she told me her birthday was two days before mine. Over time I came to understand she had a very pure and almost angelic presence. She was very helpful and understanding, and our conversations would flow effortlessly, so much so that we’d keep talking forever if I didn’t politely cut it off out of respect for her time. I actually never was able to speak to anyone quite like this before.

Everything she said, I felt deep inside of me and agreed with it not out of blind affirmation, but truly understanding. The fact that she was about 17 years younger than me made it even more outstanding. She was pretty shy and reserved; didn’t like going to the movies or even being in public alone, yet she would tell me about her deepest insecurities and I would know just what to say because it was like I was talking to a younger female version of myself. Sadly, one day after I returned from winter holiday, she was gone, and I never saw her again after knowing her for more than a year.

My second example was my nutritionist. He was an ex-wrestler who lived in New York named John. We followed each other on Twitter. Every time he would tweet something on Twitter, I would think to myself, “That’s….exactly what I would say” to the point where he was basically tweeting for me. It wasn’t until LATER that I found out that his birthday was three days after mine. Sometimes people accuse those who study astrology as trying to see something that isn’t really there, but what then when you see it before you even know? His wife, my personal trainer, even said we were a lot alike.

The third and final example would be, my father. Our birthdays are four days apart, where the influence begins to wane, but it is still there. I would say my father and I have an uncommon bond compared to a lot of other father-son pairs I’ve seen. We have a lot of the same ideals even though how we work to achieve them are sometimes different. The best and worst of us is reflected in each other. Sometimes it drives us insane, and sometimes it compels us to work together to achieve a common purpose.

I was so interested in learning more about them that I offered to make a horoscope for everyone there. Annie and Nicole were both Libras with what is called the Moon in Scorpio. It’s about a one in 144 chance that someone would have both the same Sun and Moon sign as someone else statistically. Realistically it would probably be much less. The Moon represents the emotional nature, where Scorpio is known as a sign of extremes that can be hard to understand because there is a lot that lies underneath the surface hidden from view.

These individuals can be known for keeping their emotions hidden from others, thus explaining Annie’s hard to read behavior, but knowing this about her made it much easier for me, especially since I have the same placement. Such a person could be totally enraged in the presence of others without anyone even suspecting anything of them. But those eyes, those intense hawk-like eyes can give it away sometimes.

They all seemed to enjoy me, a total stranger, telling them about themselves as though I lived underneath their skin, as others have also done for me before. When analyzing another person with astrology, with their permission of course, it’s usually best to become familiar with the keywords and placements of everything and then just let the intuition do its work instead of trying to analyze with the conscious mind. That way a person can avoid projecting their own ideas onto another person and also say exactly what the person needs to hear about himself or herself. Questions are of course helpful too.

I focused on Nicole for a moment, as she was reading something on her smartphone a couple stools to my left.

“Wow! You have both the Moon and Venus (the planet of love) in Scorpio! You must really care deeply about people once you get attached. Maybe when you break up with them you’ll do something like social meeedia staaalking,” I said in a playfully taunting way.

Nicole’s eyes flashed wide for a second and then went back to normal without looking away from her smartphone.

“I only did it once…” she confessed.

I had a little chuckle about that.

People with strong Scorpio in their horoscope usually make good detectives too because they have a tendency to get to the bottom of things and people. They always know there’s more than meets the eye and enjoy a good mystery.

Astrology is one way of looking at things, but it’s certainly not the ultimate. It’s like mathematics, where anything can be analyzed using that tool, but if used too much, everything can turn into numbers, or in this case, planets, and it can lose its actual meaning.

My cousin Tom went back down to Nashville and watched a Packer game at a local bar. While he was there, he actually met a woman from Waukesha who stood out because she was also cheering for the Packers, and they started dating. Thinking about that, the Christmas parade incident a few months ago, and the fact that these three at this bar in Waukesha really stood out and it seemed like I was having an extended stay on the crossroads with them, I was starting to make connections in my mind.

“There’s something about Waukesha right now…” I said, and Annie nodded her head, not fully knowing what I meant but still understanding somehow.

The place was standing out far too much compared to the other surrounding areas to be ignored.

On my last weekend to deliver my current routes, I came across a familiar house in Oconomowoc far from the downtown area. It was a house where there was a girl selling paper airplanes the previous summer for a dollar. I didn’t have a dollar at the time, but the girl still gave me a paper airplane. I felt bad and told her I’d give her a dollar the next time. I had no idea this house was on my route today, but I reached inside of my wallet and FORTUNATELY there was a dollar inside, unlike usual.

During the winter there was never anyone outside of the house, but now that it was spring the father was just off the driveway with a few others, including the girl. I walked up the driveway with their package, and the father met me halfway. I gave him the package, but also explained that I had something else.

“This is for the paper airplane your daughter gave me last year,” I said.

“That was you?! I’m surprised you remember,” he said.

It had been about seven months since she gave me the paper airplane.

“You don’t have to do that,” the father said.

“It’s alright,” I insisted.

The father got the attention of his daughter and I gave her the dollar that I owed her, even though they never expected to see it. The father looked so grateful even though it was a small gesture, but sometimes small gestures have huge impacts.