I heard it through the Tarot line.

 

I heard it through the Tarot line.

Posted on Aug 20, 2011 by Cybee

Original post on my old blog, Wordpress

Chapter One

In the early 1990’s I worked in the telephone and data communications industry which gave me the knowledge and insight to the forthcoming, ‘Technological Revolution’ and how this phenomena was about to rocket us into the 21st century. A few years earlier I had seen, in the ‘Jobs vacant’ section in one of the local news papers, a company asking for Tarot readers to work on a, ‘Tarot Line’, basically they would be taking calls from the public who would request a Tarot reading from the individual reader who answered their call. The same thing happens today but is far more sophisticated and is now predominantly internet driven.

In 1994 I applied for a job on one of these telephone ‘Tarot Lines’ to do some research on how effective Tarot reading over a telephone line. My intention was to stay for about six months maximum, but it turned out I stayed for two years. During this period I met all kinds of people and all kinds of readers. I’ll tell you about some of these amazing people in another article.

I worked on the night shift for several months purely because it was the busiest time of day and it passed the time more quickly and you got paid by the amount of total minutes you spent on calls during your shift. The night shifts became the most popular ones to work on. Many different types of people called the line and the variations in questions were limitless. There were some pretty strict rules to abide by too. On answering the call the caller would have the rules explained by the reader and if the caller was happy to continue with the reading the reader would then start off the reading. I just need to explain a few of these rules before I can begin the story.

Please bear with me...

First of all there was an age restriction of 18 years old, you also had to be the telephone, ‘bill payer’ or have permission to use that line by the ‘bill payer’, this stopped people running up large company phone bills by their night shift staff. It also stopped young teenagers trying to use the service from their in-laws and parents phone line and so on. And finally, you would explain how much the call would cost, usually a price per minute, and in those early days it would be about 36 pence per min during the day and about 46 pence per min at night.

One  early November night, whilst on a 14 hour shift which had started at 7pm that evening, I received a call between 11:00pm and 11:30pm, from what sounded to me like a very young child, possibly female. Of course, the first thing I asked was if they were 18 years or older, to which they replied that they were and that she was 21 years old. Still unsure, I raised my hand to the supervisor, which was a signal for assistance and motioned at the same time for her to listen in on the call. Once the supervisor was ready I explained to the caller, that in my view, I felt that she was too young to use the service and would have to disconnect the call. I looked at the supervisor and she gave me the thumbs up to go ahead and disconnect the call, which I did after a brief explanation of why it was necessary to do so.

Chapter Two

Want to know what happens next?

Several minutes later the supervisor caught my attention and waved me into the office. She had the phone in her hand but the microphone was covered. She explained to me that the girl’s mother had just phoned and told her that she was 21 years old and the supervisor was going to put her through to my phone in 2 minutes and that I should accept the call and do the reading for this girl. I said ok and went back to my desk and got my cards ready for the reading.

The call came in and the supervisor put it through to me and I accepted the call and started talking to the young girl. As I started to lay the cards out I really didn’t like what I was seeing unfolding in the spread before me. I explained to the girl that the cards were detailing some pretty negative signs and that maybe because of the mix up on the first call this could be why. The girl said that she was fine and would like to carry on regardless of what I might tell her. This was probably one of the most difficult readings of my life, but still she kept urging me on to complete the reading. As I neared the end of the reading I started to get quite emotional and noticed my voice toning down to a whisper. I had already told her some quite upsetting things and this was going to be very hard for her to understand just what I was about to reveal to her. She still insisted I carry on to the end of the reading.

I came to the end of the reading and explained that I was going to summarize the whole reading followed by my conclusion. I had to find a way of explaining to her that even though she was very young, only 21 years old, that she may not reach a more mature age and that her life may be quite short indeed. At this point I started to cry and she knew that. She paused for a moment and then said, “Simon, don’t be upset because I’m not and you have given me the most honest and truthful reading I have ever had.” She had phoned many Tarot lines and never heard what she needed to hear she said and I was the first. I couldn’t believe how calm she was considering what I had just revealed to her. Even now she was very happy with what I had told her. She then started to tell me everything that had happened in her life.

She was born with a life threatening disabling illness and was not expected to live more than a few months, let alone a few years. She had now reached the age of 21 and had spent most of her life in a wheelchair being cared for by her family.

She also new that very soon the illness was going to cut short her very young life and so did her family. The doctors had given her a few more months to live before the illness shut everything down and she would be gone.

I cried and sobbed on the end of that telephone for ages as she told me all about her life and her family and how happy they were all together. To put it into perspective, it absolutely broke my heart to speak to such a brave and inspiring person for so long and she never stopped smiling laughing for the whole time. When you have spent so many hours on the telephone doing a job like this you know when people are genuine. You can feel and sense it. Eventually she ended the call and I wished her all the happiness in the world before I said goodbye and put the phone down.

I stood up and went to my supervisors office and knocked on the door. She asked me to come in and close the door behind me. She looked up and I could see she had been crying and she said to me, “I thought I would monitor your call just in case I might have to cut it short, but once you got into it and she still wanted you to carry on I let it and just kept monitoring.” “What an amazing young girl she was.” said my supervisor. I know, I said and I’m sorry for getting so upset. Then the supervisor's phone rang and it was the girl's mother and she asked to speak to me. My supervisor told me take it at my desk and she will monitor it just in case.

I waited for the call to be put through and picked the phone up to speak to the mother. The mother told me her name and said that she was so happy. She had never ever seen her daughter smile and laugh so much in all her life. I didn’t know how to respond to that remark and so I just said, as you do, I was only doing my job. The mother said no Simon, you did more than your job, you made my daughter laugh and be happy and that she was very grateful for taking the time and effort to be so kind to her. The whole experience was an absolute shock to me. I had never felt emotions like it in my whole life and now an even bigger shock was about to happen.

The mother asked what I was doing that Christmas and did I have any holidays planed over the festive break. I told her that the line was closed over Christmas and New Year and so I would be having my young son stay with me. She asked how old he was and his name. She then asked would I like to spend the time with her family in Scotland and that she would pay all travelling expenses and to bring my son too. She said it would be a great surprise for her daughter to meet me and my son and it would also mean so much to her to meet the only person to have ever made her daughter so happy.

I was unable to accept the invitation as I had already arranged to stay with people that Christmas, but thanked the mother for the offer and said that maybe we could visit them some time in the new year.

The young girl would ring me every time I was on shift for the next few weeks and sadly, after the Christmas break I came back to work to the sad news that the girl had passed away during the festivities and never heard from the mother again. A few weeks later I left the line and started a new job.