When I was about 8 or 9, we had a candy dish shaped like a large leaf. At one end sat a little elf. I spent hours trying to will that elf to life.
I think I sort of believed that it was really alive, and that all I had to do was to convince it to reveal itself.
My granddaughter was impressed at how good I was at getting lights to change to green.
My wife always seemed to do better than expected at the slot machines in the NCO clubs in Japan. Actually, she did the same at bingo. In fact, she could probably have earned a living at bingo. Yet whenever I went with her, I never won anything.
Richard Feynman told a story about when he was in college. He was sitting in his room when he suddenly had a strong feeling that his grandmother had died. Suddenly, the phone out in the hallway rang. But it was for someone else, and his grandmother hadn't died. His point was that if he had had that feeling and she
had died, then he might have been tempted to think that he had had a genuine premonition. I'm sure that I've failed at willing traffic lights to change much more often than I've succeeded, but I don't retain those.
I don't think there's anything to telekinesis, precognition, etc. No testable mechanism has ever been suggested, and when we rely on anecdotal evidence, we can't distinguish mere coincidence from causation.
On the other hand, I have a pretty good anecdote of my own. After I retired from the Army, I ended up running a computer-controlled engraving machine, making plaques, trophies, signs, nametags, etc. Our customers were mostly military personnel from Ft. Ord, the Presidio of Monterey, and the Naval Postgraduate School. The owners of the company I worked for were a husband and wife. Jim was a retired Special Forces Colonel, and he mostly handled the merchandising side of the business. Charleen handled the books, payroll, and other behing-the-scenes operations.
One morning, Charleen came in all excited. She had been watching Uri Geller on the Tonight Show. At some point in the show, he told the home audience to find some mechanical object that didn't work. She dug out an old watch. Then, she followed his instructions and concentrated on making it work--and it
did start working.
Naturally, we all laughed at her story, presenting plausible reasons for what had happened.
A couple of days later she came in with a similar story. Geller had been on some other late night show, and went through the same thing. This time, Charleen found a watch that had belonged to her grandmother. She said that it had not worked in all the time she'd had it. Once again, she concentrated on it, and it started working.
All the employees were gathered round, some amazed, some (guess who) skeptical. It happened that I had a little digital clock that wasn't working. I had mounted it on a desk set, but had to switch to a different one when that one failed. It lit up when turned on, but the time never changed.
So, I reached up on a shelf, got the little clock, and handed to Charleen, saying, "Here, make this work."
She held it between her hands, pressed it to her forehead, and began saying "Work, work..." over and over. After a few seconds, she brought her hands down and showed the clock. Sure enough, the seconds digits were changing steadily.
They tell me I spun around three times in my amazement.
After that, things sort of got out of hand. We had opened a branch engraving shop on the Presidio of Monterey, and the gal who worked there told the whole story to the folks who ran the watch repair shop there. To make a long story short, she began bringing in watches that the repairman couldn't fix, and Charleen got several of them to work. She also had a couple of the women who worked with us bring in their own watches. In one case, she got one to run. In the other case, she talked the gal who brought it in into trying it for herself--and that started running, too.
I'm not sure why, but the whole thing sort of petered out after a couple of months. Certainly Charleen's success rate was ridiculously high--just about 100 percent. The only time I saw her fail was with a digital watch that turned out to have corroded battery terminals.
Charleen had no theory of her own about what was happening. I certainly don't, either.
I used to concentrate hard.
