I’ve posted about Karma before, how if you do something for someone, the universe will reward you. Likewise, if you do something crappy, the universe will punish you.
I reward people who help me carry my purchase to my car with a Snapple and a granola bar, since I always have those two things with me. It’s amazing how thrilled a thrift-store worker can get over such a small gesture.
I gave away a carload of fabric and won a drawing two days later for the same value as the fabric ($200).
I helped a friend out and found a treasure in a thrift store near her house on the way home.
I went to a chorus audition and stopped at a thrift store, only to find an entire set of vintage dishes with two large tea pots and all the other side pieces for practically nothing ($65) for that many pieces.
The other day a woman fell down in front of the Salvation Army in Pleasant Hill where a lot of homeless guys gather during the day. I had walked in front of her and was loading my car when I noticed she was on the ground. She was asking a young teen-aged boy to help her get back up. He had her grabbing both of his hands, but she couldn’t pull herself up.
Flash forward, that’s me a couple years from now. I headed down the sidewalk to help him, but two women (in their sixties?) beat me to it and had her by each arm, ready to pull her up.
The woman’s flip flop (we used to call them thongs) was on the ground pointing the wrong direction. When she stepped out of her sandal she had gone down. What was a heavy lady in her late sixties/early seventies doing wearing those dumb things with no support? I turned the flip flop around and lined it up with her foot. The women pulled her up and waited for her to slide her foot back into the flip flop. At that point, there as nothing left to do, so I turned to the stunned teen and asked him if he wanted a Snapple. He said no thanks. He looked at us four old women and might have wondered how he got involved.
“You did your good deed for the day,” I said.
The teen got on his bike and still seemed a bit dazed by it all. He had been in the right place at the right time to help the woman when she fell.
I hope he got some good Karma out of it, even if he didn’t volunteer but was asked to help.
Two days later, I dropped off some cardboard to a woman mulching her yard. I had just happened to be at my Berkeley gynecologist’s appointment when the office was having a new exam table delivered. I asked for the cardboard, walked back to my car to put it in, and then sat in the waiting room as the same two guys brought in two more new exam tables. There was a bunch more cardboard down there on the sidewalk (I was up a floor), but I was in the queue to be seen, and I wasn’t going to leave the waiting room to go get it.
After I dropped off the cardboard and some sleeveless tops to my friend, I stopped a the Salvation Army again to see if there were any tea cups to buy. There weren’t. But right next to the doors to the back room, I saw in the corner a statue standing by itself against the wall. It was a wooden angel. For the yard. Perfect.
Thanks, universe, for rewarding me yet again.
FIRST DATE, WORST DATE EVER! 