I learned the wisdom of keeping my mouth shut in the fourth grade when Miss Winters, a stern, white-haired disciplinarian, ordered me to eat my sack lunch in the classroom with her instead of outside with some of the other kids. This was the punishment for some minor infraction. Lunchtime was nearly over and we'd both finished eating; she said she'd be gone for a few moments and that I was to erase the blackboard during her absence, which I dutifully did. Class had hardly resumed when she started looking around the desk for her favorite mechanical pencil, asking if any of us had seen it, and looking straight at me. I didn't want her to think I had taken it while she was out of the room, so I probed the contents of her purse, which she always kept in the upper right drawer of her desk. "It's in your purse," I blurted out. I was sent home with a stinging note. Since then I've kept quiet. At one time I assumed everybody was able to sense. I've known better for years. Still, I wonder how many other people are as close-mouthed about their special gift as I am about mine. I used to think that some day I'd make a lot of money out of it, but how? I can't read thoughts. I can't even be sure what some of the things I sense in probing really are. But I've learned to move things. Ever so little. A piece of paper. A feather. Once I stopped one of those little glass-enclosed light or heat-powered devices with vanes you see now and then in a jeweler's window. And I can stop clocks. Take this morning, for example. I had set my alarm for five-thirty because I had to catch the seven o'clock plane at San Francisco International Airport. This being earlier than I usually get up, it seems all I did during the night was feel my way past the escapement and balance wheel to see where the notch for the alarm was. The last time I did it there was just the merest fraction of an inch between the pawl and the notch. So I sighed and moved to the balance wheel and its delicate ribbon of spiraling steel. I hung onto the wheel, exerting influence to decrease the restoring torque. The wheel slowed down until there was no more ticking. It took quite a bit of effort, as it always does, but I did it, as I usually do. I can't stand the alarm. When I first learned to do this, I thought I had it made. I even went to Las Vegas to try my hand, so to speak, with the ratchets and pawls and cams and springs on the slot machines. But there's nothing delicate about a slot machine, and the spring tensions are too strong. I dropped quite a lot of nickels before I finally gave up. So I'm stuck with a talent I've found little real use for. Except that it amuses me. Sometimes. Not like this time on the plane. The woman beside me stirred, sat up suddenly and looked across me out the window. "Where are we?" she asked in a surprised voice. I told her we were probably a little north of Bakersfield. She said, "Oh," glanced at her wristwatch and sank back again.