A Little Story on Karma

So there I was driving around with a weak key chain for my car key. It was an old loop that had probably been around about as long as the car had which is about 20 years. The only problem is that key chains back then weren’t built as well as the cars and extended periods in pockets and other cramped spaces had altered the integrity of the barely overlapped single looped ring. 

Over the past few weeks I had been unusually upset in parking lots quite frequently noticing that generally people don’t really know how to park a car and that they don’t care about the extent that their parking job might be affecting someone else. So on this particular evening while parking my car in a hotel parking while I was traveling for work, I happened upon another careless park job. Someone in a regular sized car had parked significantly over the edge of their space rendering the one to the right unusable by anything larger than a sideways smart car or a motorcycle, of which I was driving neither. Inconsiderate parking is such a pet peeve!

So I devised a plan. Actually it was really more of a reaction to the thought, “Screw this guy.” Since it was at a hotel in a white collar working city on a weekday, the odds were that this was a male between the age of 27 and 50 who was staying alone. And the man was wealthy enough to afford such a great car, or rent one, so he probably cared little about his effect on the more trivial people in life, e.g. those parking next to him. With these facts considered I used my skills as a former car dealership lot-boy to make this guy’s day a little more inconvenient.  Knowing he would have to enter from the left side of his car, I drastically over-parked in the empty space to the left running into his space and leaving about four inches between our doors. Since I was alone, I didn’t have to worry about using the passenger door of my car. If he was an inconsiderate fat man, this would frustrate him greatly, whereas I had enough space to dance the Virginia reel out the driver’s side of my car.  

Now, there are a number of people who would fear retaliation in this situation. But anything serious I could sue for (I had jotted down his license plate just in case) and my car at the age of 20 was already suffering from minor damage to the point where I was not terribly concerned with any further minor damage to its aesthetics. 

I did have a quick thought about karma. It went like this: “Someone should really screw this guy over for being such a jackass. But if I’m the one, then doesn’t that make me a little bit of a jackass? Like, other than myself, and God who I know isn’t actually paying attention, would anyone know that I was after revenge, and not the original perpetrator. It always happens in a hockey scrum or every elementary school fight, one guy gives a cheap shot and the other retaliates, and it’s the retaliator who gets busted. Maybe karma is such that it doesn’t need people to intervene on its behalf. The original perps will get what’s due to them eventually and it is against the laws of karma to take it into your own hands. Committing a crime on any level will inevitably come back to you. And I look particularly bad because I am over the line as well, so people might assume that I was the original culprit of the bad parking job which forced the other vehicle to park out of place. They would be wrong of course, and the evidence is there at the scene in that if I parked first then the other driver must have intentionally parked close to me which would block him in. Since it is illogical to assume that anyone would do this, selfish, reckless, altruistic or otherwise, they would conclude that I was not the original culprit. But if nobody gives it enough consideration to tell that I’m not the original culprit, perhaps I am guilty of the same thing. Perhaps the car that I have intentionally parked so close to was in a bad place because he was playing karma police to another car that used to be next to him? But honestly I don’t think anyone cares about this nearly as much as I do, so that’s probably just not true.”  This was the thought anyway. And as most thoughts that aren’t written down do, this one passed.

So content with the situation, I grabbed the two bags from the seat next to me, one containing a pair of shoes I had just purchased, and the other was my dinner from Jack-in-the-Box, coolly flung open and locked the door in the same motion (no auto locks, I told you the car was 20 years old didn’t I?) and stepped out into the night spinning as I nudged the door closed again with a little hip check.

I managed easily to get into my hotel room despite the items that were dangling off my arms. I half tossed, half set, the shoe bag near the wall and worked my way into the ‘living room’ portion of the hotel to make preparations to eat what was surely going to be a guilty pleasure of a meal from Jack-in-the-Box. I was hungry, it was about 9:30 at night, and everything respectable in the town was either closed or sure to take a long time. I set the bag of food on the coffee table, it was just a burger and fries, and set me keys down next to it. 

Uh oh…

I guess they had been feeling a little bit light in my hand as I carried them back to the room, but they looked particularly bare sitting on the table with just my small bike lock key, and a regular sized house key. But the former anchor of the chain with its thick black plastic partial encasing was nowhere to be found. The first thought was to kick myself for not getting a new key ring. How much would it actually cost, cents at most? Some people might just give them away for free. Then there was a little bit of panic. I searched my pockets, knowing that my car key shouldn’t be there, since I didn’t put anything in my pocket after I parked the car. It was time to retrace my steps. Luckily I hadn’t done much since leaving the car, so the variables of where it could be were relatively few. I looked around my hotel room, to see if I had dropped it anywhere. Nothing. I went back outside and looked down the walkway that led back out to my car. They could have been anywhere along that path. But I had to take the walk now, dinner could wait. This needed to be solved, because this could be a dire situation. I might have to call a locksmith or AAA, and they might not be open this late, and do have to get to the job site in the morning. I carefully examined the walkway hoping to find my key somewhere as I made my way down the path. Still nothing. It had been in the back of my mind this whole time that it likely fell off while still in the car, and as I made it all the way out to my vehicle without finding a key, it became more of a reality. 

It was fairly dark in the parking lot, but I thought about the embarrassment of having to explain why I was parked so poorly to the tow truck driver or the locksmith who was going to help me break into my car. They are certainly going to assume that I’m a complete jackass and that karma was certainly repaying me for my bad deeds. I tried to peer through the windows to see if the key was anywhere inside the car. Though there were a couple of lights around the mostly dark lot there were still many shadows on the inside of the car that made spotting a key difficult. I couldn’t see it on the seat. And it was hard to tell if it was on the floor, but it didn’t seem like there was anything unusual down there.

I had difficulty getting around to the passenger side of the car to check if maybe it had fallen on that side of the car. I couldn’t make out enough to tell either way, and I couldn’t really get a good angle to look properly. Even if I couldn’t get inside with the key locked in, it would still be good to confirm its location. Didn’t appear to be on what I could see of the floor or the passenger seat. But still there were many shadows and it’s unlikely that a key would fall into a convenient location. I checked the door handle on the passenger side just to see if it might be unlocked, though I was sure it was. It was. I probably couldn’t even open the door enough to squeeze in even if it was unlocked I was parked so close on that side. 

So standing there in the night, next to my locked car, parked very close to a stranger’s car who I thought needed to be taught a lesson, it all made sense to me. I understood what had happened. I had tried to change the course of karma by punishing someone else’s bad deed. But that’s not my job. Karma doesn’t need enforcement. Karma just is, and I was just being an asshole. I repented. I was sorry. I was trying to karma’s job and now I was paying the price for my bad deed. 

Okay, I get it. I will let you take care of it next time. This is my punishment but I’ve learned my lesson. 

Defeated and hungry I made it back to my room, and plopped back down on the couch resigned to fix at least one of my two current problems. I picked up the brown fast food bag thinking of whether I knew anyone in the area who might know a cheap locksmith. I spilled the contents on to the table to sort out the fries from the burger to an unexpected sound. My heart was immediately uplifted when I saw it lying on the table next to the container of fries. The tension which had crept into my body without my noticing began to melt away, I sighed a big sigh of relief, and a smile came over my face.

I concluded I was saved by one of the luckiest catches imaginable, as the key fell off the ring, probably as I was taking it out of the ignition, it must have landed in the Jack-in-the-Box bag. Before I could take a bite of my ever chilling dinner, I knew there was something I had to do. So I took the key and immediately went out and re-parked the car properly in its space, thus righting all of my wrongs.

I thought I was in charge of karma, but it turns out I’m not.