Some time ago, I accepted that I have very bad karma in three areas: cars, computers and travel. (The latter concerns going to and from places and should be distinguished from my fabulous vacation karma – once I get there, I’m golden.) My computer karma is so bad that one of my colleagues, something of a computer expert, refuses to let me in his office for fear of what my being in breathing range of his computer would do to it. Lately, however, it’s been my car karma that’s been trying to get me.
My car has needed a lot, recently, ranging from the expected (new tires, new batteries), to the less expected (new catalytic converter, new brakes, new sensors), and as I currently have a leak in my radiator which must be seen to in the very near future, the fun isn’t over. So when I discovered that one of those fairly new tires was flat this past weekend, it was a bit more annoying than it might usually have been. Add to that that the guy from roadside service sent to change it couldn’t find some particular tool he needed (apparently it should live in my car but didn’t appear to be in residence at the moment), so he couldn’t help me, meaning that I then had to have it towed to a tire store … well, you get the picture. I was fantasizing about living a car-free life again, the way I had in NYC. Mind you, I live in DC, not NYC, where friends are scattered well beyond the range of the metro system, and where the grocery store, liquor store, and the theatre where I act are all too far away to walk. Snapped back to reality, I was headed home with my new tire when I noticed a small metal piece in the center console. Now I know little about cars, but I had no doubt that this was the piece the roadside service guy had needed. What could I do but burst into laughter?
Later, I told my father about the tire and he asked, “Well, what would a new one cost?” “A tire?” “No,” he said, “a car”. I stated that I don’t think a flat tire is a reason to replace a car. He noted that the car is 12 years old and has needed a lot of work in recent months, which is certainly true, but, as I pointed out, it has relatively low mileage. And then I realized why this conversation struck me as so silly. This is the same man who, when I suggested that if he replaced his twenty-plus year-old mattress he might have less back pain and sleep better, he exclaimed, “You don’t throw out something just because it’s old and not perfect! Are you going to throw me out, next?” Again, I had to laugh.
Now I’m wondering if perhaps I haven’t found the answer. No, I don’t expect my karma to magickally improve. That radiator is still leaking and yesterday, the console cover broke when I opened it to pull the gas lever. There’s no reason to assume that I won’t again spend 24 hours in an airport hotel while the airline brings another plane over from Ireland, or that the airlines will suddenly take me off the list of people whose luggage must always be lost. What is happening, though, is that these things don’t annoy me the way they used to. I’ve spent a lot of time laughing about the car. I used the 24 hour layover to catch up on sleep and I’ve learned how to fly without checking bags. Or I take the train. So the question is, does it count as really bad karma if it’s not upsetting you? And even if it does, do we gain good karma by dealing calmly with the bad karma? And finally, what did I ever do to computers to make them hate me?
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