Questionable Karma

Not too long ago I had the unfortunate experience of waking up with a Nickelback song in my head.

For some people—the dozen or so fans of the band—this would have been a delight. For other people—the person writing this post who is not a fan of the band and who has OCD, therefore causing the song to remain there all day—this was the opposite of a delight.

After about 10 minutes of contemplating either a lobotomy or going back to bed and starting over, I instead decided to be proactive and figure out how I must have ticked off the karmic gods to deserve such an ill fate.

Despite my legions of charitable acts—flipping a worm off the burning sidewalk onto the grass, joining in a sense of community when an entire line of cars silently agreed to prevent a jerk from cutting in at the front—I suppose there were a few questionable things I could blame.

Questionable Karma

When the weather is nice, I often take my mom’s dog for a walk and always make sure to have my plastic poop bag on hand for pick-up. However, there “might” have been an occasion when I could tell he was going to dump and I “might” have dragged him to the next yard to go, simply because I didn’t like the people who lived there.

The little boy who lives there “might” be a huge brat who always yells stupid things at us when we walk by, so I “might” have pretended to pick up the poop and instead grabbed a leaf to place on the top of the pile. I don’t think this is the reason though, as if the karmic gods are watching this kid, they would probably thank me.

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I admit. I got your voicemail and just didn’t listen. To alleviate this problem in the future, maybe send me an email or a text and let me know if the voicemail is actually worth listening to.

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I’ve retweeted a compliment. Personally I find this extremely annoying, as I would never go around the grocery store and tell people, “Hey! My friend just told me she actually liked my book and I think you should know!”

However, sometimes I apply the “tweet others as you would like to be tweeted” rule and acknowledge those misled souls who take the time to follow me, as I do appreciate it. It still annoys me when it’s self-promoting though, so karma might have just stepped in.

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When it comes bugs, I figure the outside is their area and I don’t bug them, so they shouldn’t bother me in my lair. However, if one makes it into my house I often try my best to do the “shoo them out the door” or “capture in a cup” method of catch and release. But some spiders choose their own fate, particularly those that fall from the ceiling and land on the counter in front of my face.

It’s a primal reaction to grab a paper towel and pummel the sucker to death, and I admit that I did this last week. The only problem is that even though I know spiders can run really fast with all of those legs, I keep thinking I’m going to find a spider in that same exact spot everyday. He is haunting me from his grave in the garbage, so karma need not apply.

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Finally, I totally committed discount deceit by passing through an old coupon. We’ve talked about this before and I’ve been trying to harness my egregious behavior, but when the possibility to save $1.50 on a ridiculously overpriced vegan veggie burger arose, I couldn’t resist. Carefully ripping the coupon so that the expiration date was “accidentally” torn off, I passed it through the self-checkout.

But come to think of it, I don’t care if I had to endure Nickelback for that one. The fact that they charge $5.50 for four vegan burgers warrants a karmic kick in the ass to those people instead. I was actually reversing the universal order of things with that discount, right? Right.

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So while I can’t quite pinpoint my cardinal sin, I do feel better having gotten these offenses off my concave, size AA chest—something else I must have pissed the karmic gods off to receive.

At any rate, I feel a bit better. Now it’s your turn. What would you like to confess today?

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