We’ve all heard “what goes round comes round.” “It’s easy to dish it out, but hard to take it.” The boomerang theory: What you send off will most likely come back … maybe to bite you. And we all know what they say about Karma. Today it happened to me.
Let me lay a little groundwork. A week or so ago, I suffered a sinus headache that should be in the Sinus Headache Hall of Fame. Just as I was recovering from two days of that, a muscle spasm hit in my hip and traveled clear to my toe. (Google said this sort of thing often happens to people who sit too long. Of course I was sitting. I had a headache!)
Skip forward a couple of days. I tagged my youngest son, Phillip, on Facebook with a post showing the sort of drama Moms can imagine when their kids don’t answer their texts. I’m sure he was embarrassed at the tag. He replied with a cryptic, “Very funny.”
Now, today.
Just as I pulled into the parking lot, I got a call from a co-worker. We spoke a minute and then I stuck my phone in my jacket pocket. I guess I “pocket-dialed” Phillip (who lives in the Pacific time zone and was most likely asleep). He said later that what he heard coming over the thousand miles between us sounded like I was in great distress. Knowing about my headache/ vertigo/ hip/ leg issues of the past week, he dialed my land line. When I didn’t answer, he called the local police and asked them to go to my house and check on me.
They sent an ambulance and fire truck — thankfully without sirens. Another co-worker, dropping her child off at school, saw the emergency vehicles at my house and alerted everyone at the office where I work.
In the meantime, Phillip thought to call my office. When I answered, he just said, “Omigosh, Mom” several times. I could hear the panic in his voice, which scared me.
He told me what he had done and I said to call the police right back and tell them false alarm before they broke down my door.
All this happened just as I was trying to direct educators to three different workshops, find a Chromebook charger, and answer the phone, which kept being Phillip. Bless his heart.
I rang my 93-year-old neighbor to let her know the situation, in case she had seen the commotion in my driveway.
Later, the church secretary called to see if I was okay. Did someone in the congregation see the ambulance, at my house?
In fact, I spent most of the morning telling folks I was fine. And I am.
Just a little Karma having its day.
I’m in a play. I am Juror Nine in the Center on the Square (Searcy, Arkansas) production of Twelve Angry Women. I’m having a blast. I knew six cast members previously and have made five new friends during this time.
About 20 years ago I was in the company of It’s a Grand Night for Singing, a revue of Rodgers and Hammerstein hits. The music is lovely, each song set in a little vignette of its own. But this particular production seemed as plagued as Shakespeare’s Scottish Play (bad luck to say out loud).