A Little Karmic Delight

Superstitions.

The idea of Karma reminds me a bit of superstitions, knock on wood, that sort of thing. Mind you it couldn't hurt. Most superstitions seem to be pretty harmless as far as I can tell, what does it hurt to throw a bit of salt over your shoulder? My husband has come to believe in my left hand after all these years. When my left palm itches, we're getting some money honey. The last time it itched, he called home and I told him it was itching, sure enough he called to tell me he was getting a bonus check. Sure it's just superstition, but I tell you my left hand rarely fails me.

Well, my friend, the one who does hair told me of a story the other day, and all I could say between giggles was, "Sounds like a little karmic payback if you ask me!" You see she had a client one day who was basically what someone would call a cranky old man, although he wasn't all that old, but he sure was grouchy. In fact, he was particularly critical of her work, and he basically threw a sort of hissy fit about how she had combed his comb over. Now I know people are rightly concerned about their comb overs, but she has lengthy experience in working with comb overs, and has even dealt with a toupee now and then. It is not that she is aloof of the comb over, she pays it all the attention it needs, and even tries to keep it at a nice length to do it's intended job without looking like a piece of tangled up kelp should the wearer decided to spend an afternoon at the beach.

This fellow was rather huffy with her, and eventually broke her down and she cried. Which I think was pretty mean of him. It was so bad, that she declared, "I will never work on him again!" This is a woman who has on occasion given homeless people who did not smell so good haircuts, and never so much as thought about refusing them service. For her to say that, I knew he was beyond merely disagreeing with her technique, he was just being mean.

He came into the shop the other day. He sat in the chair waiting for her co-worker to give him the signal to hop into her barber chair. Apparently he had a cold my friend has surmised. "You're not going to believe what happened," she told me, "he sneezed and a big old booger flew out of his nose and landed on the floor!" He just sat there looking rather embarrassed occasionally focusing on the thing that flew out of his nose when he sneezed. Everyone just sort of tippy toed around the thing, not wanting to acknowlege it's existence there on the floor, and wishing there was a way to make it go away without everyone being embarrassed about the whole thing.

After seeing him squirm a bit my friend offered him some tissue, and went to the back for a moment. "I would have been so embarrassed!" she told me, and I agreed, I would have died of embarrassment. "Well after the way he treated you, I guess that was just his karma coming back and biting him in the rear." I told her.

That wasn't enough, what happened next is so gross I hesitate in even bringing it up. Well shucks, I guess I must. People routinely bring their dogs to the shop, it's a friendly place, kind of like Cheers, where everyone knows your name, and your pet's name, and there was a dog in there that day. Apparently everyone sat in suspended horror as the dog did what dogs will do, it ran over there and slurped that nasty booger right up off the floor, and it's owner was not too happy about it. My friend gagged when she told me that part. My response was, "EWWW!"

The karmic lesson here, if there is such a thing, I guess would be, don't go around humiliating people and making them cry, or that stuff might just reverberate back on you making you sneeze a big hocking boogie right in front of the person you attempted to embarrass before and you might find yourself feeling quite gross and stupid at the same time. What's worse, she might tell her friend, who has a blog, about it and the story might be retold on the internet.