Don't Spit Up In The Air

Saturday morning I was dancing around the kitchen to a favorite 80s tune. Boy George lilted out "Karma, karma, karma, karma, karma chameleon" while I stomped around with my spatula in hand. My son came in for his eggs and grumbled it was cruddy 80s music, that my dancing was goofy, and his eggs were burned. Oh, and his sister was ugly.

When her indignant shrieks subsided, I frowned and waved my spatula in my most threatening manner. I informed him that some cultures actually believe that whatever you put out into the world, the world gives back threefold. Thus, his insults to my excellent dancing and his name calling to his sister would come back threefold. After that morning, he would never be an exceedingly handsome, champion dancer.

Grabbing his eggs he left grumbling about his crazy mother. I told him that the threefold belief was true. When I was a sullen teenager, my mother threatened that someday I would have one of my own. And here I stood, spatula in hand, with three grumbling teens all at once. My mother used to refer to that type of karma as "Don’t spit up in the air." And I obviously never listened.

Ask any woman on a diet about the threefold universal rule. A moment of weakness and a banana split later, shows up as three pounds on the scale the next morning. And a few cheeseburgers later, three pants sizes larger are still too tight.

Show a bit of kindness and throw a few breadcrumbs to a few hungry seagulls and, within seconds, you are swarmed by at least 400 hungry seagulls pecking your head and grabbing the Sunbeam bag from your hands as you run for cover while wondering if that Alfred Hitchcock movie was true.

Have your child need to show kindness to a pet bunny and take home that chubby pet bunny to be loved and petted, and that chubby pet bunny turns into three more bunnies to be loved. Or even six. Or twelve.

And if anyone knows the joy of showing love to a warm, wonderful, purring kitty, they certainly know that whatever food it is given seems to turn into three times as much clumpy litter to be cleaned from the box.

But then there is the good threefold karma, too. As another hurricane evacuation ensues, the memories of the last one drift up. When I was a young, newlywed and had to move to a far away city with no one to befriend me, I had another young woman that took me in hand. She took me to lunch and called me on the phone, and showed me friendship where none other was to be found. Seventeen years later, across the state, she showed up at my door as a Katrina evacuee and her family stayed in my home. She felt like she got her karma back threefold., but I got my dear friend back down the street for four wonderful months after a 17 year break. We shared lunches again, shared children again, shared long nights of laughter and cardgames once again.
When she returned back to New Orleans we both cried. I still don’t know who got the threefold. I wonder if the rule doesn’t always have a beginning or and end. It seemed like we both reaped in the good.

And a few months back a few moms stepped up and pushed for a later start to school for the health of all the young athletes. They got what they asked for, but so many special days off were taken away from our children and parents. We spent the last week grumbling about being the only parish or county in the country that wouldn’t get to spend Labor Day with our families. And it felt like maybe a grumpy school board had chosen the days with maybe just a little bit of spite.

But as Gustav roared into the Gulf and churches opened their doors, people once again opened their homes, and hospitality poured out of everyone hearts, that Labor Day that had been taken, turned into three school days off. Kids cell phones lit up, the websites filled with young people’s cheers, and the parents all sighed at getting that extra day of sleeping past six. Seems like the rule of three might have been listening. And even though my son thinks I’m goofy, I kept dancing in the kitchen. Sounds like "Karma, karma, karma, karma, karma chameleon......."