Heeding

We were raised to put stock only in those level-headed beings who were well-dressed and exuded the air of college degrees. If we heard something wise come from the mouth of a beggar we knew it was either an accident or the fellow was mimicking: hence the Dumb Blonde and Pollock Joke in the U.S. and the Newfie Joke in Canada.

But the older we got the more we came to realize that opposites really do coexist, that incongruities walk side by side, that oxymorons are neither moronic nor oxy-ic: hence the meteoric rise of Harmony Drake.

"Sounds to me like a comic character," said the Captain of the softball team.

Not only did Harmony's name soundthatway but she looked the part, too: dishwater hair, pie-faced, with an incognito figure. She was just there, never doing anything, never being anybody.

"So scratch her, even from the B Team. Anyone who looks like that probably plays like that."

And so it went through Harmony's childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood: Plain Jane was always overlooked.

But we and every other perceptive entity knows that looks are not only deceiving, they are sometimes downright false. Not that Ms Drake was a genius, a beauty queen, or married the class millionaire, but inside that unassuming exterior lay a dormant Tiger. One who could metamorphose into a most conspicuous being if she wanted, elicit oo's and ah's and make the extroverts ask, "Where didshecome from?"

While she was developing, Harmony protected that dormancy by acting the Dumb Blonde: that is, when she didn't play Wallflower. The more she appeared silly or even a fool, the more her classmates would dismiss her and thereby strengthen her camouflage. Later, she learned another technique to divert attention: if she teased others, they became defensive and the attention turned toward them. By acting the twit, Harmony Drake became a successful piece of furniture keeping safe her deeper self.

What was the secret this wallflower hid so well for so many years? Something she was told at the State Fair by a bonafide, turban-wearing, bejeweled, crystal ball-yielding, Gypsy fortune teller: that after the age twenty-five, her inherent psychic abilities would emerge and she would be able to find hidden and lost objects merely byintending. The Gypsy also

told her something that half-scared the modest girl: if she ever revealed her talent she would cause great damage to herself and everyone around her. Harmony was so impressed by the premonition that she swore MUM FOREVER. And she held to her vow throughout her life.

While Ms Drake was no Venus any more than a Madam Curie, she was, in keeping with her name, a relatively accomplished musician. Since she promoted the wallflower image, naturally she never concertized. Like a bathtub baritone, she kept her talent to herself. The same was true with her ability with languages. Secretively she learned how to read and speak French, Spanish, and Italian before graduating from high school: by the end of college she'd added Portuguese and Greek. Interestingly, all languages spoken along the north of the Mediterranean.

At State U., Harmony undertook a double-major: European History and Oceanography. It is apparent, now that we look back on her life, that intuitively she was preparing herself well for her late blooming profession, finding lost treasure.

For that became the prime focus of the woman though she never let anyone know -- in keeping with her Gypsy-reading vow. Harmony Drake was well prepared for the time the prediction manifested: she was a minor expert in galleys and merchant ships and cargo vessels that had met maritime mishaps in the Mediterranean Sea throughout history.

On one level the whole Gypsy Thing was a game to the woman. At first, she would believe she possessed psychic powers only after she had made a find. Until then, it was a romantic notion, an imagination teaser, a super idea. But, reasoned Ms Drake, if the reading turned out correct, why not be prepared?

Some believe that we are born with certain abilities and that's that. Some who have rubbed shoulders with the intuitive doubt if one can train himself to sharpen his natural abilities. And it seems out of the realm of speculators that one can sail through life acting one way, then, like a genie let out of a magic lamp, suddenly "become" psychic. But that's the way it was with Harmony. For just as the Gypsy Fortune Teller had predicted, we can now say that Harmony Drake did in truth become extraordinarily psychic concerning sunken, lost, and buried treasure in the Mediterranean. And southern European museums, salvage companies, and treasure hunters the world over can attest to the woman's unusual ability to find the lost -- though they never knew it wasshewho did the finding.

This is because Harmony kept to her vow. When she sensed the location of a treasure, she convinced others that they had made the find. That's how firmly Harmony believed the Fortune Teller's premonition.

One of the great finds Harmony helped uncover was the Arabian cargo shipTsahabfeatured in International Geographics. There it was, buried in

several feet of mud and sediment, barely the tip of her mast showing. Submerged for centuries. Harmony put a drop of coffee on a salvage map where she had seen the sunken ship in her mind's eye. So cleverly did she placed the clue that it looked like an accident, yet was real enough to entice the company to search. They were amazed when they found so much ancient bullion. Ironically, they wondered iftheywere psychic.

Harmony planted the location of finds in other ways. She would passively suggest that maybe through that strait or isthmus a merchant ship might have traveled wanting a short cut to Rome or Athens.

"But it's rough there."

"True, but if you were a greedy captain who was promised a bonus if you delivered early, wouldn't you dare it?"

After they searched the rough channel and to their amazement found a fully laden cargo ship, the salvager chalked it up to logic. Of course, Harmony knew it was there all the time, but tell anyone? NEVER.

Harmony passed away in well-planned obscurity. When her brother rummaged through her belongings, he came across a stack of high school diaries and, being curious, read one. He found a most ominous remark, one that nearly slipped by: NEVER TELL ANYONE. Edward passed it off as a typical remark of a teenager girl. Especially one who was famous for being a wallflower. But at night his imagination asked questions.

Never tell anyonewhat?

Whynever tell them?

Was this the secret ranting of a girl who had been kissed and was so embarrassed she never told?

Or a Freshman who'd fallen in love with the Captain of the football team and knew her friends would humiliate her if she ever let it out?

Naturally the brother never found out, for his secretive sister had not mentioned a word beyond the strange statement. Had he used his keen eye, however, he could have found some clues, and had he been a detective he might have deduced some thing. Such as an entry following the Gypsy reading: "Went to the State Fair with Edward. A most interesting find."

Had Dr. Drake persued that, he might have remembered that his sister had been drawn to Madam Margaurita's booth. That she spent an inordinate amount of time there. And that she had come out with a most serious look. He might then have asked, "What did the Gypsy lady tell Harmony? Did anything ever come from what she was told?" Had he asked these questions, then the word find might have run a bell.

But even if he had persued, he would have come up empty handed. Because for fifty years, commonplace Harmony never revealed a nuance of the Gypsy's reading beyond that slip.

Edward salvaged from his search his sister's Bachelor's Degree in History, Master's in Oceanography, various certificates for proficiency in Romantic Languages, and a sizable bag of coins. It turns out that every time a psychic impulse presented itself and then manifested, Harmony snitched a coin from the site. Naturally Edward didn't know this, so was amazed to find so many ancient coins, coins from Rome, Athens, Carthage, Memphis, Lisbon, Barcelona, Phoenicia, Bombay, Istanbul, Hong Kong, and Tokyo. When he had the them appraised, he found that as sole benefactor, he possessed a sizable landfall.

"Why, that sneaky sister," Edward mused. And then he made an oblique connection. "Maybe that's what she meant when she said she'dnever tell.That she'd keep her collection secret. That must be it." He didn't make the connection that she wrote the words in her high school diary, years before she went to college and hit the high seas. The brother was happy for the mini-fortune, yet strangely he decided to keep the find a hidden treasure of his own. "I wonder how many optometrists have rare and secret coin collections?"

And so the secret of Harmony Drake's extraordinary psychic ability has been perpetuated, though inadvertently. Or was it? Was Ms Drakesotalented that posthumously she passed onto her brother the warning of the fortune teller?

Still, it should be pointed out that Harmony's story possesses more than meets the eye. For she began as a twit: a silly, surfacy, near-fool whom no one took seriously. Remember the girl who redirected attention so she wouldn't be exposed? But now, after the fact, we see her as the guardian of a profound truth, one that we are only now beginning to understand. Yet we can all learn from the inconspicuous mentor: what is told to us in secret should remain secret.