Never underestimate a Scorpio

Press, 27 January 1988, Page 13

Never underestimate a Scorpio

Scorpios run through my life with relentless regularity. Regardless of where I happen to be working, a group of them will suddenly pop up without so much as a Government Health Warning. I am particularly susceptible to those born under the sign of Scorpio. There is something irresistible about their subtle manoeuvring that demands your full attention. Giving a Scorpio my full attention is something I have become very good at. I have learnt the hard way that underestimating one is not to be recommended.

I have also learnt to fight just one Scorpio at a time. When I see them travelling as a pack I react instinctively like the legendary lemmings and head for the nearest cliff. Scorpios carry with them a built-in radar for other people’s weaknesses. This naturally makes them very effective in an argument or all-out fight. Not for them the hit-and-miss method of annihilating the enemy. It is one shot, straight through the heart, and they don’t take any prisoners. Scorpios do not fight fairly. Nor do they subscribe to the theory that “it is how you play the game.” Winning is all that matters. If you introduce emotion to an argument they will counter with cold logic. If you start with logic you can be sure they will retaliate with an emotional attack which

implies you have no heart. Scorpios are also incapable of telling proper lies. The blatant fib is bypassed in favour of the lie by omission. They will simply fail to give you the full facts and let you draw

your own wildly inaccurate conclusions. When confronted with evidence of this, the Scorpio will tell you, quite rightly, that they never actually said that, you merely assumed. And there you are, in the wrong again.

Scorpios are never wrong. At best they are confused, misled or not given the full story by someone else. But wrong? Forget it. Naturally, people who are never wrong make great leaders, and controlling other people is what Scorpios do best. The armed forces are full of Scorpios who direct their troops on to better and bigger things while they look for the chilly-bin in which to transport their cold beer to the next foxhole. Scorpios can get anyone to do anything. While persuasion and flattery are their preferred tactics, Scorpios are not above using a direct threat if they think it will get the job done. While quick to spot the mistakes of others, Scorpios will go to enormous lengths to make sure you don’t discover theirs. Should you be so fortunate to catch a Scorpio knee-deep in the debris of a mistake, they will convince you that they actu-

ally planned it to happen that way. They do this by looking you straight in the eye, fixing you with a gaze that would strip paint off a door at 50 paces, and daring you to disbelieve them. All of which makes you wonder why normal people bother with Scorpios at all. The answer is simple. Charm. Scorpios were right there in the front of the line when charm was handed out, and some obviously rejoined the queue several times. When things just can’t get much worse, a Scorpio will go into the control tower (that others call a brain) and flick the charm switch. As a recipient of this charm, you find yourself not only forgiving them completely, but grovelling on the Axminster and admitting it was probably all your, fault anyway. Whereupon the true Scorpio will show just how democratic he or she can be, by agreeing with you.