When we were undergrads at a large Midwest university, my wife and I and baby daughter lived in married housing. The building we lived in was a Quonset hut and the building was home to three separate families.
        The students in married housing were all men and called, “Daddy!” by the children screaming in the small grassy play yard.
        I rode my bicycle home, parked it and noticed a strange face among the familiar people tossing a ball in the air. The stranger, a young man, saw me and smiled. I set my briefcase on the small front porch as my daughter shouted, “Daddy!” My wife unlocked the screen door.
        After I picked her up, hugged her and gave her many kisses, I looked back at the stranger. I sat my daughter on the bench and told her to stay there.
        The blond young man picked up a glove and motioned to it.
        I nodded.
        He threw the glove to me, I caught it, and we began to toss the league ball back and forth. As we played, we talked. His brother lived in the third unit and he also was a student.
        “Yeah, my brother is older than I am. He’s always on my case to get down to studying but I would rather just play ball.”
        “Professionally?” I asked.
        “Yeah,” he said.
        “What’s your name?” I asked.
        “Tommy,” he said and tossed the league ball with meaning.
        “I’m Ely,” I said and tossed it back.
        “You’ve got a good arm,” he said.
        “I’ve played a little,” I said.
        “Do you study a lot?”
        “Oh, yeah. In Engineering, they pile on the homework....”
        “I wish I could study or bring myself to study,” Tommy said.
        Suddenly I realized Tommy had moved closer to me, and we weren’t throwing the ball as far or as hard.
        “Have you ever heard of a Mr. Smiley?” Tommy asked.
        “No. Who is he?” I replied.
        “He lives in town, across the river.”
        “What about him?” I asked.
        “He’s a hypnotist or at least that’s what I’ve heard.”
        I didn’t throw the ball back as Tommy acted like he wanted to talk and not play catch. Tommy was good looking. He had an athlete’s slim build, no fat, and his clothes fit him comfortably if not snugly. “Are you interested in hypnosis?”
        “I don’t know.”
        I motioned for Tommy to sit on the porch with me. I picked up my little girl. She sucked her thumb as we talked. She smelled of here mother’s cologne.
        “You get good grades, don’t you?”
        “Yeah, Tommy. Why do you ask?”
        “I don’t get good grades. My grades are terrible.”
        “Are you asking me to help you?”
        “Yeah.”
        “OK! What do you want me to do?”
        “Will you go with me to see Mr. Smiley across the river?”
        “Of course, but why? Won’t your brother go with you?”
        “Nope. He says it’s silly.”
        “What is silly?”
        “It’s silly to be hypnotized to make a guy study and bring his grades up.”
        “I don’t think that the idea is silly, but Tommy, how did you learn about Mr. Smiley?”
        “He has a business card on a bulletin board at the campus bookstore.”
        “Oh really?” I said. I didn’t know.
        “I’ve heard other guys on the team...”
        “What team?”
        “The baseball team. Frosh!”
        “Oh!”
        “They say he’s brought their grades up.”
        I realized that Tommy was hesitant about going alone or with his friends and since he and I were not in competition, he naturally would feel comfortable if he and I went to visit Mr. Smiley together.
        “OK. I’ll go,” I said. “When?”
        “Tonight?”
        “What time?”
        “About eight.” He stood as I handed him the glove. “I’ll check with him. If tonight is OK, I’ll come by here and call for you.”
        “Gotcha!” I said.
        
        As we pulled up slowly to a long row of old Victorian residences, I thought about how amused my wife was that I was going with Tommy to get him hypnotized. She believed in the impossible but told me in her opinion, Tommy was a lonely young man and needed friends.
        “That’s it!” Tommy said, raising his voice. “Geez. I wonder if that’s Mr. Smiley sitting in that rocking chair?”
        I saw an older man who appeared to be in his sixties. The porch light cast a yellow glow over his skin, but he rocked slowly and watched as we got out of the car and walked up the long, wide, concrete walk to the porch stairs.
        “Good evening, sir,” I said.
        “Gentlemen,” he replied in a soft, calm voice.
        “Are you Mr. Smiley?” I asked.
        “The same,” he said and smiled broadly.
        We stepped up the eight stairs and he left his rocking chair. Mr. Smiley sat on the landing and Tommy and I sat beneath him on the second stair.
        “What can I do for you?” he asked. He glanced and me and stared at Tommy.
        “This young guy here hopes that you might be able to help him study and bring up his grades,” I said.
        “Um!” Mr. Smiley. I knew he meant, “of course I can. It’s academic.” Mr. Smiley impressed me as being a very responsible and positive person. And yet, suddenly I got the impression that he had doubts about Tommy.
        “Have you ever been hypnotized before?” he asked.
        “No,” Tommy said.
        “Yes,” I said. “Oh, I thought you were talking to both of us.”
        “I know you have, but it’s this one here ’m concerned about.”
        “Why?” Tommy asked.
        “You are putting up barriers.”
        “I don’t know what that means,” Tommy said.
        “You are afraid.”
        “I’m....”
        Tommy didn’t finish his sentence. Mr. Smiley put his hand on my head and said, “Sleep!”
        I could see in all directions. It was like I was sitting in a field. The world had become silent except I could hear Tommy gasp and ask questions. I heard Tommy and Mr. Smiley talking to each other.
        “What happened?”
        “Your friend is in a light state of hypnosis.”
        “How did that happen?”
        “He is not afraid.”
        “Where is he?”
        “He’s here.”
        “Can he hear us?”
        I wanted to say that I wasn’t really, “here”, but then, I couldn’t identify where I was, and most of all I wanted to tell them that I could hear them, but their voices were faint. Their conversation sounded like two men talking with their voices traveling a great distance across a large field.
        “I don’t know if he can hear you, but I know he can hear me,” Mr. Smiley said. “I’m going to bring him back. What’s his name?”
        “Ely. His name is Ely.”
        “Ely,” Mr. Smiley said, “you’ve rested well and long enough. I’m going to have you rejoin our discussion on the count of five: one, two three, feeling better than you have ever felt, four, five. Ah!”
        “Mr. Smiley, I could hear both of you talking but it seemed like a great....”
        “...a great distance,” he said, finishing my words.
        “Yes,” I said. I smiled.
        “You, my young friend, have to want to be hypnotized. You have to get rid of your fears. Work on them. It will happen.”
        I was surprised that Tommy didn’t ask to be hypnotized. He thanked Mr. Smiley and we left. On the way home, I asked him why he didn’t want to be hypnotized. “It was your idea,” I said.
        “I guess I’m still not sure of myself. I can do a lot of things with my hands and body. I can play a mean game of baseball, but I’m having trouble with the books.”
    
        I hadn’t seen Tommy in several months, although his brother had told me he was doing fine and living in one of the dormitories. I had gone across the river into town and was driving down Willow Street when I saw Mr. Smiley sitting on his front porch rocking, perhaps even dozing.
        I pulled over to the curb. He continued to rock. Then he waved. “Ah,” I said, “he’s seen me.”
        I hurried up the walk and onto the porch. He continued rocking. A newspaper laid beside the rocking chair. He wore work shoes that came up over his ankles. They looked old, but were well-polished. They appeared heavy, as though they might contain metal toes
        “How’ve you been, Ely?” he asked.
        He flattered me. He remembered my name.
        “Do you mind if I lean against the rail here?” I asked. The railing was thick and the posts were like wide bowling pins. Old, strong and didn’t need paint.
        “Not at all, sir,” he said. He smiled.
        “I’ve been fine. I’ve been busy...”
        “Yes,” he said.
        “I have been trying to find time to talk to you. You are not in the telephone book.”
        “True,” he said. He cleared his throat. “Talk?”
        “About the night I brought Tommy to see you and...”
        “And you took a trip,” he said.
        “And, I took a trip.”
        “Yes. You are open, have little fear of anything or anyone, and have a pure heart.”
        I was stunned by Mr. Smiley’s comments.
        “I try to be honest.”
        “You succeed,” he said.
        For the first time, I noticed the clothes he wore. Trousers, gray shirt, vest accented by a gold pocket watch and gold chain. His shirt sleeve cuffs were open at the bottom and turned up once. His eyeglasses rested down on the edge of his nose and he continued looking at me over his glasses. “Thank you, sir,” I replied. “I’ve tried...”
        “You’ve succeeded, sir.”
        “But I didn’t want to talk to you about me. It’s about Tommy...”
        “Yes. We have successfully handled that...”
        “Oh, he came back to see you?”
        “Yes, he did. I asked about you. I asked why he hadn’t brought you with him, and he told me it was time he took his life into his own hands.”
        “Good,” I said.
        “Yes, indeed. Very good. I won’t talk about details, but he had a few, well, I guess your generation would call them ’hangups’. He had traits of shyness about his mind and his body. But that’s all done with now.” Mr. Smiley lowered his head and asked, “But Ely, you and Tommy go to the same university. Don’t you read the local newspapers?”
        “No! I don’t have time for that.”
        “Well, that’s the reason then.”
        “The reason for what?” I asked.
        “The reason you don’t know anything about everything that’s happening in Tommy’s life.”
        “Are you saying his life is important to me?”
        “I’m saying that you are too busy, probably taking too many hours in school and you should take time relax. You have great potential for many activities in this world and other worlds...”
        “What?”
        “Yes.”
        “Sounds a little strange!”
        “Spooky?”
        “No, sir,” I said. “I’m not certain what you mean by saying, ’this world and other worlds.’”
        “Surely you must know. You have to be aware of various abilities you have. Some would call the abilities powers.”
        I screwed up my lip and frowned.         “You always frown when you listen attentively. Did you know that?”
        “Yes.”
        “Do you know that if you try you can learn the secret of removing tattoos?”
        “Tattoos?” I laughed. “Why would I want to do that?”
        “It is one of the many powers that...”
        “Mr. Smiley, sir. How do you know this information?”
        “I used to be a Rosicrucian. A long time ago. It is part of their teaching.”
        “Powers?” I asked.
        “Powers of the mind,” he said.
        I remained quiet for a short time and watched him rock.
        “After some years studying with them...”
        “The Rosicrucians?”
        “Yes.” He cleared his throat again. “I believe that there are people such as you who are mostly in this world, but available to travel to other worlds, possibly at will.”
        “How would I know this.”
        “You should already be aware.”
        “You mean when you hypnotized me?”
        “Yes. But you convinced Tommy to become the man he needed to become.”
        “I did?”
        “Yes. He told me he believed in you. He told me that when he came back to be hypnotized.”
        “And you hypnotized him?”
        “Oh my yes. Right here on this porch. He had a half-eaten apple before he left on his journey and finished it after he came back. He was gone for about half an hour. He had some dilly of problems to overcome.” He giggled. “Nothing serious. Most young men have the same problems he had.”
        “You say, ’had.’” I waited for Mr. Smiley’s reaction.
        “Yes. Well, of course he doesn’t have them anymore.”
        “His grades are up?”
        “Oh my yes. Way up and he’s the star catcher on the university’s baseball team.” Mr. Smiley rocked. “It is that time of year and you will do well for yourself to notice the change in the seasons.”
        “Yes,” I thought.
        Mr. Smiley reached down and picked up the folded newspaper. “Here look,” he said. “There is a marvelous article about Tommy.” He looked up at the porch light. “Is there enough light for you to see it and read it?”
        “Yes,” I said as I began reading it.
        I finished the article and must have looked puzzled. Mr. Smiley rested his chin on his hand and said, “You didn’t know how he felt about you?”
        I shook my head.
        “Well you do now, don’t you?”
        “Yes.”
        “Take the time, sir, to know who you are. You are powerful and do influence people of all stripes. Your mission, of course, is to know yourself.”
        I nodded in agreement as I stepped forward and shook Mr. Smiley’s hand.
        “May I take the sports section...?”
        “Yes,” he said.
        I turned and walked on the porch, down the steps and on the walkway to the sidewalk. Over and over in my mind, I recalled Tommy’s words in the article, “...and I owe my abilities to a friend and mentor, whom I shall refer to only as Ely. His own actions gave me the courage to face my fears and I have overcome most of them. When I have a problem. I think about what Ely would do, and then, the problem goes away.”
        Since that time at the university and visiting with Mr. Smiley I have come to know myself better and I’m using the abilities. They are magnificent. Tommy has come to the same conclusion.