A right hook to the jaw

Twenty years ago, a woman everyone dismissed as "crazy" walked into my workplace and cracked the code of my existence with

.

She didn't ask for money. She didn't scream. She just walked up, punched me, and then leaned in with the terrifying intimacy of a prophet.

"If it wasn’t for the storm off the coast of Florida the day you were born," she hissed, her eyes locking onto mine, "you would have been born retarded."

She used the slur of the era, the ugly word hanging in the air between us like smoke. Then she was gone, shuffled away by security or the wind. I stood there, stinging and stunned. What in the hell did that mean? There were no hurricanes in the papers on my birthday. I checked. But as I rubbed my jaw, I couldn't shake the feeling that she hadn't just hit me—she had read me. Was she mad? Or was she a seer who saw the invisible storm that saved my life?