Sorta Telekinetic SLIpping and SLIding

A flash of memory on a morning train: A kindergarten classroom. A paper cutout of a stoplight. Circles of red, yellow and green, arranged vertically. The smell of paste. The tile floor. This was followed immediately by a deep sadness. Why? A sense of loss? Of onetime innocence? Of something too far away now ever to be known again? Or was it instead a sense of a time that was bad to begin with? I'm not sure.

When I was very young?around the time of kindergarten, I guess?my dad had me fully convinced that he could make stoplights change by blowing at them.

"Watch this," he'd say, as we sat at a stoplight in our beige Corvair. I'd watch as he puffed out his cheeks and blew at the lights in front of us. Just as he did this, the light would change from red to green, and we'd drive on. Sometimes, even today, I still believe that he had that power.

Which reminds me of a fellow I saw some 10 years ago?a fellow who obviously wanted that same power in a desperate way?standing in the middle of the intersection at 23rd and 6th, suit, tie, briefcase, standing there amidst all the traffic, screaming, "Change, light! Change!" at the stoplights. (It didn't work nearly so well for him as it did for my dad.)

Well, now I find out, there's also a whole substrata of people out there who really do believe they have this power. A form of it, at least. Believe it with all their hearts.

Over the past month or so, I'd been in communication with a guy in Canada. Nice guy he was, and we chatted about this and about that. Then one day, I'm not sure how it came up, he mentioned something called "streetlight interference phenomenon," or SLI. It's a reference to those rare few individuals who have the power to make streetlights blink on or off simply by walking beneath them.

"Jeeze," I thought, "I've noticed that, too." But I never put it down to anything more than the lights simply shutting off?as they do on a regular basis?to cool down. To some people, though, there's much more to it than that. To some people, it's a sign that there's obviously some sort of psychic activity going on.

Not sure what kind of psychic activity, but something. These same people, it's reported, have a hard time wearing watches or using credit cards, can change television and radio reception merely by walking into a room, find that electronic toys come to life when they're around and have a tendency to make lightbulbs burn out.

They don't have psychic control over every single streetlight they pass under or every single television set they encounter, but it happens often enough to make them wonder.

"Jeeze," I thought, "I've had some of those other things happen, too." But again, I never gave much thought to it. Except for the business with the watches. Couple years ago I wrote a story about my watch troubles.

Who knows? Maybe I was one of them?one of these "SLIders," as they call themselves. Not as much fun, maybe, as being a scanner, but it's something. They have SLIder websites and SLIder message boards and SLIder books and everything devoted to this problem?a problem that, it seems, makes life itself absolutely unbearable for some of these people. Not sure why it would, but it does. I can understand "irksome," maybe?but nope, for a lot of them, it's unbearable. Especially those who try to make a habit of checking their watches under streetlights, I would imagine.

(I met a woman once who claimed she was allergic to fluorescent lights, and she was pretty goddamn miserable, I'll tell you that. She also made life miserable for everyone around her.)

Not only does SLI cause these people undue stress?it seems to come about as a result of undue stress. Most of them notice it, see, when they're under extreme mental duress?much the same way I notice the three-piece mariachi band on the subway whenever I'm in a state. The SLIders are thinking hard about things, they're walking around, burdened with troubles and suddenly, poof?there go the lights.

Problem with all of this SLI business is that there's no scientific evidence or basis for any of it. No hard facts, no numbers, no charts and graphs and measurements upon which to base a theory that would show this to be anything beyond coincidence. Just a pile of anecdotal evidence from people who noticed the streetlights blinking out around them every once in a while. So what's the obvious explanation? Psychic activity.

As one reasonably rational website put it:

"The problem with such investigations, as with many forms of psychic phenomena, is that they are very difficult to reproduce in a laboratory. They seem to happen spontaneously without the deliberate intention of the SLIder. In fact, the SLIder, according to some informal tests, are usually unable to create the effect on demand."

Hmmmm...

"A reasonable speculation for the effect, if it is a real one," the site goes on to report, "might have something to do with the electronic impulses of the brain. All of our thoughts and movements are the result of electrical impulses that the brain generates. At present it is known that these measurable impulses only have an effect within an individual's body, but is it possible that they could have an effect outside the body?a kind of remote control?"

Yes, well. I was telling Morgan about all this one night, and she, as she so often does, had a perfectly logical explanation. First, of course, she brought up the "lights shutting down to cool off" business. But she didn't stop there. There's a clear socioeconomic explanation at work, she figured.

The people who notice these things, she said, obviously notice them because they're out walking around a lot. And why is that? Well, because they can't afford a car. Why can't they afford a car? Because they're probably out of work, or have a shitty job where they don't make too much money. What's more, as a result of that, they probably have to buy cheaper, lower-quality tvs, radios and lightbulbs. All this, you see, leads to mental distress and self-absorption.

So they're out wandering around (because they have nothing to drive) thinking about their troubles when all of a sudden, poof?a streetlight goes out. Or they're at home, and the radio reception's bad and the lights keep burning out. They start seeing patterns where there are no patterns, coming up with explanations for why these strange phenomena are directly related to them, rather than poor craftsmanship or coincidence. Next thing you know, they think they're controlling everything with their super psychic powers.

Believe you me, you get in a mindset like that, it's very easy to start seeing the world in those terms. I've been living in such a world for quite some time now. In my own case, however, instead of citing some psychic phenomenon as the root cause, I just call it "Jim's Cheap Symbolism," or JCS?an acronym provided many years ago by another friend of mine.

Which, in its own way, may explain why I still want to believe that my dad could change the stoplights by blowing on them.