Josh Minney, middler
I was ringing up a customer at my family’s boating-supplies business in Southern California, when my cell phone vibrated.
It was my good friend Smith Anderson, a senior who was taking a break from school. He’d been adjusting to life as a young professional and lamenting that his Husky Card no longer got him into the Marino Center.
I, on the other hand, had just completed my sophomore year, and was home for the summer trying to choose my next major.
“I’m nervous,” Smith said.
“Oh, God, what now?” I asked, conditioned to fear the worst from Smith.
“I just bought a plane ticket to Japan,” he replied.
“Awesome,” I said. “I’ll buy mine right after work.”
Three weeks later, carrying backpacks and a little money, we were reunited at Tokyo’s busiest intersection. Smith and I were about to start a two-month, round-the-world adventure that changed how I view our planet. Also eBay. And psychics.
After two expensive days in Japan, I set off for Bangkok alone. Smith and I had been booked on different flights to Thailand, and he missed his by five minutes. I hated to leave him, but he had travel insurance and I didn’t, so my missing my flight, too, wouldn’t do us any good.
Little did I know, the shoe would be on the other foot before long.
Once we met up in Bangkok, we traveled north by train. In Thailand’s jungles, we found waterfalls, rice paddies, and the most picturesque locations imaginable.
Next, we hopped on a plane to Vietnam for eight days, five of them spent traveling the countryside on dirt bikes. I finished this part of the trip with a cool-looking scar, a gouged helmet, and a bike with four missing blinkers.
The second half of our tour took us a long way from Asia. We flew to Morocco, then went to Germany. In Frankfurt, our odyssey picked up speed. We headed north to see the Berlin Wall, made a wrong turn, and ended up in Poland. We visited Prague for my birthday. After stops in Slovakia and Austria, we headed to Italy.
A fashion-designer friend put us up in a villa in the Italian Alps for a week while we worked in his factory making high-end jackets. Trekking down “the Boot,” we spent another week in digs across from the Vatican.
By the time we reached Smith’s cousin’s house in the Netherlands, it was official: I had no more money and no ticket home. I was stranded.
Smith suggested I auction myself on eBay. It was a joke at first—until it wasn’t. The idea was that the highest bidder would win a week of my labor in exchange for paying my airfare home. After my eBay page got 1,500 views in the first six hours, we realized this might just work.
Since he had to attend a family reunion, Smith headed back to the States. I had a ticket to London, so I went there to wait for my auction to end.
After staying with an acquaintance in Hyde Park, I took a bus to Oxford to crash with a girl I’d met in Vietnam. Using her computer, I saw my auction was up to $500. Then I went to stay with a distant cousin in the Midlands, who put me up for four days until my auction ended.
By the time I was “sold,” I’d received sixty-three bids and 8,800 hits. The winner? Darlene Anderson (no relation to Smith), a psychic and the owner of Regina Russell’s Tearoom, in Quincy, Massachusetts. She had bid $935.01. Within hours, Smith received the money via PayPal and bought my ticket home.
At Logan International Airport, Smith and my family met me at the gate. And so did reporters from Fox 25 TV news and the Boston Globe, who started asking questions the moment I came into view. Darlene, my rescuer and new boss, was in the crowd, too, holding a sign that read “Welcome back to America!” I hugged her and thanked her for taking a chance on such a risky purchase.
We headed to her house in Quincy. The tearoom where I’d be working was next door. Darlene had made up a guest room and stocked the pantry for me. Breakfast was an omelet, not Vietnamese pork soup or English beans on toast.
The next morning, it was time to get to work. The tearoom employed more than twenty clairvoyants, all with their own ways of predicting the future.
I essentially served as the tearoom’s host. I’d greet customers as they came in, seat them at a table, and offer them a menu that listed the available psychic services.
As the client decided whether to choose Tarot cards, a palm reading, the crystal ball, or tea leaves, I’d serve them coffee, tea, or lemonade and answer their questions.
The work that week was painless. And when business was slow, the psychics took turns giving me readings. The personal information they “knew” about me was accurate enough to turn me into a believer.
Though I’ll never know what possessed Darlene Anderson to respond to my listing, I’m forever indebted. Without her, I might still be in Europe.
I gave her a very positive rating on eBay.
My story ended up in U.S. News and on Good Morning America.
And when I returned to campus last fall, I switched to my fourth major: international affairs.