Karma from a stranger.

Maneuvering through a congested gas station lot today, I learned about karma.

Busy lunchtime hour, and every dispenser is full with activity. Some sort of grand re-opening going on, and the lot is abuzz with corporate faux-excitement. People on their lunch hour, waiting for spots... literally inching their cars nose first every few seconds, toward a currently occupied non-moving vehicle... hoping to get that much closer to a coveted turn in line. Taking their foot off the accelerator ever so gently, intermittently halving that hair-line interval between them and the car in front...as if the driver is anticipating that moment just before the lot might magically transform itself into a fault line, creating an earthquake of asphalt...their car inconveniently just out of reach from the hose. Annoying.

So ponderous to me that people can't pay at the pump. It takes three times as long for them to make a transaction. They find an open spot, walk into the station, prepay, walk back out to finish pumping gas, get in their cars with the engine running while gas is still dispensing. Maybe take a call or two on the cell phone. How about a chat with the spouse in the front seat, why not? "Kids, you ok back there? Anybody want anything?" Then walk back into the store to buy whatever the signs enticed their fat gobs to salivate, that they couldn't possibly have carried with open hands the first time.

And when I finally have to back into an open spot (because, of course, the one available pump faces the opposite side of my tank), I stand there annoyed. Cursing in the cold dry air because the receipt paper NEVER prints out at this far pump, and I have to make an annoyed journey up to the register. Damning the person who tells me the mechanism is probably jammed, when I know there's not been a roll of paper installed for months.

(I tend to not let life's small things bother me. I don't want to concern myself with minor inconveniences I have no intrinsic power over. Maybe growing up, I learned to be the antithesis of my father, who has gotten much better in his older years, but in my younger years could polarize at a moment's notice. )

Whatever. I'm failing to see the convenience of anything in life at this moment. Why does everything have to be so difficult?
For all the technological simplicities, everything a process now: "Talk to that person." "Go wait in that OTHER line." "Turn to the right. Turn to the left. Your other hand." Geez.

By now, I'm making a right turn from a stop sign, onto a right-turn only street. I just missed the light change from traffic on the left, so there's no chance of making a quick escape. And with holiday shoppers out in full force, the rush is steady. So, I gotta wait it out. But not without Soccer Mom in the Mini Van honking her horn at me. I look in my rear view, and she's motioning for me to turn right, with two rapid- fire succession finger jabs. What the...seriously?

This sets me off. She wants me to turn into this maniacal onslaught? Feck her. Now I'm not gonna turn at all, just to incense her further. I'll take my time, now, you old bag. And I'm cursing at her (well, really at her image, because I cowardly never took my eyes off her in the mirror). I stick up a single determined finger in a sign of defiance. Like, "Take THIS." And I shout it too (windows up of course). And then I speed off, mainly hoping to leave her eyes forever seered with my rebelliousness and disrespect of a delicate flower such as herself. But more so because, yes, I'm still a coward, pulling symbolic pony tails then running.

And I drive home, the whole time afire with the audacity of her actions burning a hole into my soul. I replay this scenario over and over, analyzing it frame by frame and taking cinematic liberty with my actions; thinking about how the situation would play out the next time she and I meet. Baseball bat to her headlights? No. Maybe I'll get out and flip her van over next time in an adrenaline rush. Yes. That would be cool.

So, as I get home, I've already framed an epic to tell: How I was nearly coerced by a stranger into committing an unsafe act. I could have been killed, mind you. And my eventual rise to power against a juice box-toting tyrant of middle suburban means. My finger has done a lot of talking over the years, but never have the words been more true.

However, this anticipated moment of adoration I would receive for making it home alive and unscathed soon vanished, when I noticed the right-sided gas cap hanging out from the fuel latch.

Oh.

Well, I'm sure she wronged someone else today, and I'm just a humble messenger. Karma comes from strange vessels.

Ahhh. Much better.