What Comes Around

From the karma department:

It's funny how it happens sometimes. Little karma events that might go unnoticed if you aren't paying attention. I've seen it happen on a larger scale, but those usually aren't quite as funny as the smaller ones.

The first time I really noticed the reciprocal nature of things, I was about fifteen. I was playing in a Pony League baseball game and a guy on my team hit a fly ball to right field. The right fielder tentatively tracked the pop up, moved around a little as he waited, had his glove up, and the ball came straight down on his head. I laughed out loud. We slapped palms in the dugout, and generally made a ruckus that made the poor right fielder feel pretty bad.

Two innings later when we were in the field, I was playing shortstop. The rightfielder was up at the plate. Dude hit a hard grounder at me and as I went down for it, the ball hit a pebble, took a funny hop, and hit me right between the eyes. As I lay on my back looking up at the sky, seeing stars, the thought popped into my head, "That'll teach you."

Last weekend I was at a party at my friends' house, Gary and Missy. They have a great set-up in their backyard, with a pool and a tiki bar, horse shoes off to the side. We play a lot of water volleyball in the pool. It's usually coed, and sometimes it can get pretty competitive. We were playing five on five in a close game and my team was serving. I was on the front line, the guy serving was right behind me. He hit a line drive serve, missed it I should say, because instead of going over the net it hit me right on the side of the face. Stung like a sumbitch, too.

Well, everyone got a laugh out of it, and the guy who hit it convinced me that it was truly an accident, so it didn't turn into an ass whipping. As everyone was laughing I noticed that one friend, Tara, playing on the other team, was laughing a little too hard for my taste. She was taking a little too much pleasure in my misfortune. I didn't say anything, but I did make note of it.

Later in the game, a ball went up near the net and my boy Skinny went up for a spike. He nailed it hard to the side, but it hit the side wall of the pool and ricocheted directly into, you guessed it, Tara's face. It didn't hurt her bad, but I know it stung like hell. I didn't laugh out loud, but I gotta admit, I was laughing pretty hard on the inside. I was thinking, "That'll teach you". I wonder if she made the connection to her earlier laughter. Probably not, and therefore she didn't understand the significance of this karmic event. The lesson was not lost on me, however.

The lesson is: don't get too cocky because it's never inconvenient for God to bitch slap your ass back to a more humble state of mind.