Que Sera, Sera...

As a little girl, I was already a stress case. My pediatrician diagnosed my frequent stomachaches as anxiety. My mom worried correctly that I took after my father's side and would suffer from ulcers. If it wasn't school causing my stomach to tie into knots, it was piano recitals, mean kids, or always something or another.

When my mom wasn't contributing to my stress, she tried hard to calm me down by singing old songs to me. The Beatles' "Let It Be" and Doris Day's "Que Sera, Que Sera" were her ways of conveying to me "chill out, you can't control everything, go with the flow..." She didn't quite say it that way, but cradling my head in her lap and rubbing my disgruntled tummy, she would sing:

"When I was just a little girl,
I asked my mother, what will I be?
Will I be pretty, will I be rich?
Here's what she said to me.
Que sera, sera...
Whatever will be, will be.
The future's not ours to see.
Que sera, sera..."

Few things have changed. I'm still a stress case though I hide it slightly better. I still get ulcers every few years. And I still want to know what will happen in the future. I'm a sucker for online tests and anything that claims to predict the future.

An old roommate of mine was a whiz at math and financial planning, plotting out his whole life on one of those money programs. Based on the level of his pay, inflation, his savings plan and investments, he somehow managed to calculate that he would be a millionaire by the time he's 40. I excitedly asked, "Oooh, do mine, do mine!" He grimly told me I'd be a millionaire when I'm 80.

That leads to a big problem since the death forecaster test tells me I'm dying at age 80. However the real age test tells me I'm actually 2 years younger than my biological age. Does that mean I'll get to enjoy my million for 2 years before I croak?

By the way, I remember taking this silly love test as a teenager. All the answers still hold true. And it's absolutely correct.