This summer, I checked a box off my bucket list and visited a psychic. It seemed as good a day as any to get my fortune told so, armed with skepticism, my friend, and a slight nervousness, I entered the slim building in downtown D.C.

In front of us was not a room, but instead a narrow set of stairs leading up to another door. I climbed the stairs, clutching my friends hand, and rang the buzzer. A shaft of sunlight peeked into the building through the entrance behind us and part of me wanted to run down the stairs and back outside. But the door creaked open, and a quite average-seeming woman stood in front of me. She nodded, as if she already knew what I wanted.

To be fair though, there’s really only one reason you’d enter a psychic’s office, so that’s not as mysterious as it sounds.

The room she led us into looked like an ordinary living room. Couch, rug, crib in the corner, hallways presumably leading into other rooms. It reeked of cigarette smoke, and she let loose a cough that rattled her chest.

“So, what would you like?” she asked.

I glanced at the price list and chose the cheapest option, which was $10. “A palm reading, please.”

She looked at me expectedly, so I held my hand out in front of her. The psychic glanced at my palm for a split second and immediately started rattling fortunes off, as if she was reading from a grocery list. Her voice was irritated and bored, which did little to pump me up for my super ~~spiritual~~ experience.

“You’re a nice person, kind heart. Very honest. You’re a good person. Healthy.”

On and on it went, with her spouting generic compliments that meant very little. I don’t know if she thought she was telling me what I wanted to hear, but I would have much rather her given me some juicy gossip about my inner psyche. After she had buttered me up, she told me I was going to travel at the end of the year, which is about the most generic fortune you can tell somebody. To be honest, I could have gotten a more personal reading from fortune cookie.

The entire time, I was looking at my friend trying not to laugh, because of a) how unconvincing this woman was and b) the fact that I always have the urge to laugh at the most terrible timing.

Then, to top it off, for my love line, the psychic gave me the initials of my friend’s boyfriend. I don’t know if she was reading the wrong hand, or getting brain vibes from my friend that interfered with the palm reading signal, but I almost lost it.

Or maybe I’ll have a fling with John McCain!

When the psychic’s reading was complete, I paid my $10. Unfortunately for me, the woman kept her money in her bra, so I got to see her pull a wad of cash from under her shirt to give me my change! After my experience, I was a completely renewed person, as I now knew the secrets of the universe. So, to celebrate, we got the hell out of that place and bought ice cream.

Overall, I was less than impressed with the psychic’s impersonal and unenthusiastic reading. But who knows? Maybe she was just saving her abilities for a higher paying customer.