Modern Astrology

I was much interested in astrology and other pseudosciences starting in about 8th grade. Handwriting analysis - graphology, we elegantly called it, was the basis for my complete redesign of my cursive penmanship, expressly crafted to show my immense intelligence and creativity with my epsilon e's and delta d's. (Combining that with my already terrible fine-motor coordination resulted in an amazing abomination of wring.)  It may have been the summer after freshman year that I tossed Linda Goodman's Sun Signs into the trash, though i fear it was later.  My interest had waned, at any rate, especially after learning that I was not actually an Aries, as I had long claimed, but a boring old Taurus.

One large factor was reflecting on the supposed characteristics of my Sagittarius girlfriend, later my fiancee and wife.  Sagittarius, you see, was an archer, and people born under that sign are supposed to have some traits which could at least be stretched to fit that type.  No one who has every known Tracy has put the word "archer" in the same sentence with her. The final straws:  I was no fire sign, and she was no huntress of any description.

Still isn't.

Years later I took an interest in astronomy, especially when camping at Lake Ossipee during the summer and looking south over it on August evenings.  I could see why many of the constellations and gotten their names, including some of the zodiac. Scorpio does have visible pincers, with only a minimum of squinting.  Gemini looks like two of something, human or not.

But Sagittarius doesn't look remotely like an archer.  It looks strongly like...a teapot.  If they had had teapots in the Arabian desert, they would have leapt to that conclusion immediately.

Here's the thing:   a teapot is actually a very good symbol for my wife.  So maybe there's something to this astrology thing after all, just off by a few millennia.