I do believe in Karma. Not for large things, because obviously that doesn’t jive, you don’t get cancer because you have bad karma, and Hitler roamed free for quite a while without a giant boulder falling on his head like it should have. But little things, yes. My husband always asks me how I can get a parking spot right in front of wherever I am going.
“Easy,” I say. “Remember, I stopped to let the lady out of her parking spot on the way here? And the guy who had to scoot across the intersection that I made a space for?”
“Yeah?”
“Two good car deeds = parking spot.”
He laughed, but honestly, this works. Most of the time anyway, I live in a big city so sometimes it doesn’t. But even when it doesn’t, I think the good deeds accumulate. But I don’t want to mis-represent myself here, I’m not always the nice and caring driver. There are times I say out loud, “Oh, no you don’t,” and I don’t budge, I don’t let anyone in, I don’t play nice. It happens. In fact most or all of the swear words my kids know have been uttered in the car. But, I’m trying. I try to remember that there is a karmic flow, and I am part of it.
Karma can especially come back at you if you make fun of someone. You get your come-upance, in one way or another…
Long ago when we lived in London my husband and I were on the tube, squished in between a billion others trying to get somewhere. He shot me a look, the one with his eyebrows that says look at that. I looked down and sure enough, some lady had the most enormous wart on her hand that I’d ever seen. Not even hiding it with a band aid, just letting the giant angry mountain on her hand air out. I raised my eyebrows back at him in a dude, that really is a big wart look. Then we smiled. We may have even had a little chuckle about it. And that’s when it happened. The Karmic Wart sensed the ridicule….and floated itself right on over to my husband’s hand. (Ok, maybe she had just touched the pole directly before he did, but it was sort of amazing that it formed on the very same spot).
It showed itself a week later and then we both laughed.
“It got you! Because you laughed!” I said, and he nodded, sadly, Karmicly-zapped.
(Note: always wash your hands after taking mass transit)
So….a few months ago I was at the local pharmacy, when I noticed they had not one, but three different skin tag removal kits. Huh, I thought. Just how many people get skin tags? That they would need several different types of removal kits? With my ten-year-old boy sense of humour, I thought, millions of people are running around with unwanted hunks of skin hanging off them! Like zombies! Its an epidemic of extra skin! I had a good little chuckle about it. Ha ha. Ha ha ha.
Fast forward to about three weeks ago when I am doing the shaving/maintenance. There is a small bump in my left armpit that I run over with the razor like a speed bump. Ow, that’s weird, wonder what that is, I think, and then forget all about it. Next time, there it is. Still there. I decide not to worry about it, who doesn’t have a weird lump from time to time, you know? And then…then it decided to show itself for what it is. It grows. It becomes longer, like…like a fucking skin tag, I realize. Huh. I had been zapped! I look them up on the internet, like most people do when anything is amiss (or when you get fish oil in your dryer).
“…can be found in areas of chaffing or folds in the skin, like the armpit.” Eww. I decide to see what happens. Will it grow really long, like a tentacle? Will it be like a new arm? The experiment becomes annoying when I realize the thing can’t be shaved off or will go away on its own. Oh no, I have to go back to the pharmacy!
I head back to the pharmacy only to find the skin tag removal kits have disappeared. Do I go somewhere else? Or do I…ask? I take a look around. There is no one else in the store. So I go up to the counter and ask in a very small voice can you tell me where the skin tag removal kits are?
The guy asks me to repeat myself. I do. At which point four people walk in the door.
He yells back to the pharmacist.
“DO you KNOW WHERE THE SKIN TAG REMOVAL KITS ARE?”
She looks at him.
“THE WHAT?!”
“SKIN TAG REMOVAL KITS!”
She comes around. I have moved away from the counter and am pretending to be just someone there, someone hanging out, someone very interested in purchasing a silver plated bracelet that lets people know I am a diabetic.
“Oh, I think we got rid of those, they weren’t really a big seller…” she goes to the spot where they were and begins to look around. At this time the four people are impatient, they all know it’s me who has a skin tag, somewhere in the folds of my body…
I try not to run out the door.
“That’s ok!” I say. “I’m good!” and then I walk briskly away from the pharmacy and the place where I received my karmic come-upance. Damn. The all-knowing world wide web said I shouldn’t try to remove it myself, that I could, I dunno, bleed out or something, which I also thought would be quite a funny way to die, so I chanced it.
I did not die. But it would have been a good way to go.
“She died bleeding from her armpit, and even left a note in blood…”
Don’t… make fun…