Karma or Coincidence?

Snowflake's Booze



Pool Boy Greetings



Special Swirly Pop

I think about Karma quite a bit. This past weekend I had a "moving" sale. My parents sold their house and all things they didn't want to carry into the next life were deposited in my garage. Luckily I had a chance to purge the bug ridden basement of clutter and crap. In the midst of everything, I came across an old 1950's lamp I found one day while walking The Chidler.

It was seven years ago that I found it curbside in front of a post-war brick two story apartment building. Apparently the little elderly lady that lived in one of the cool downstairs apartments had died. All of her unwanted belongings were left for the garbage man.

The lamp was minty mint, fresh and fruity as it stood in defiance of the surrounding debris. Cream ceramic and glazed with abstract turquoise blue and real gold brush strokes, the double tier shade matched the glaze colors. Bright swaths of blue and matte gold repeated the pattern of the base. The finial, a matching bright blue melamine ball.

It was perfect and it was mine. For the time being.

For a few years I kept this swank retro madame in my living room until I de-clusterfucked the room. Down to the dungeon it went. Years passed. Time moved on. My next door neighbor quit his job selling imported cars and bought a building.

The building that this lamp came from. A building he and his wife have renovated to sell antiques. The shop is in the apartment that the lamp came out of. His wife came to the moving sale on Saturday. I brought out the lamp told her the story behind it and gave it to her. Her husband came over and she relayed the story. I told them that whatever they did, they just couldn't "sell it". They thought that was cool and left to begin their days.

Later in the day she came back raving that the lamp was a talisman for them, her husband made an enormous sale to one person that afternoon.

"That lamp is home. It's good ju-ju for you," I say.

"I should run home and give you something, Heidi" she says.

"No way. If you want to give me something sometime, you'll know when it's right. That's how I felt about this lamp when I gave it to you. It's so weird, isn't it?"

She agreed and my mother added that her daughter is the type of person who gives things because she wants to, not for something in return. I was amazed at that comment. We had an excellent sale and I made a shitload of dinero. Enough to pay for the fucking crowns in my mouth. Yee haw.

Monday brought no relief from inferno like temperatures. Snowflake dipped naked in his new purple pool when I got home from work. When we went upstairs to take a bath, Mr. Naked was practicing his high pitched grunting and squatting as if to shit, trying to get a laugh or a rise out of me.

"You know," I say irritated from the heat, "if you crap on the floor or on your rug I will be very upset with you." I went into another room and let the fates cast the toilet paper.

"I crapped! Yeaaaaaaaa! Truuuuuuuuuuuuuuby!" I hear and come running.

Sure as shit, he shit in his Baby Bjorn potty chair! Thank the great beyond because this was like a curried ass blowout. I was amazed and proud and so was he. We called Nan & Gramps and then he jumped in the tub. He knew he was going to get the big payoff, a SUCKER for his moment of glory.

Cleaned and cute, we headed off to the only candy shop in town for a very special treat. A strange foreign lady wearing a funky long version of a dutch boy bowl cut blonde wig was asking a million undecipherable questions while we patiently waited to pay for the pop. She looked like one of the Dutch Masters. No, not the painters, the guys on the cigar boxes.

"Is that all for you two?" the owner asked.

"Yes. This is a very special sucker. We had success in the bathroom," I tell her.

"Oh, a potty sucker? Congratualtions! That is so great, it's on me," she beams.

"Really? Well thank you very much. We'll be back again." I say as Snowflake adds

"Shanks."

I thought that was such a great gesture. I still smile about it now. It's not like it was just a Tootsie Pop or something. This was a grand sucker, a significant sucker and for free? It was an instant karmic sucker.


karma, material objects, suckers , moving sales, crapping