You ever get those childish, hateful thoughts about people who really get you cheesed?
Of course you have. At least, I'm sure you had those "I hate my parents I hope they get hit by a bus" thoughts at least once when you were a kid.
I have to admit that even when I was trying to be more relaxed and even-tempered, doing hours of yoga and tai chi, I'd still get these kinds of negative ideas (that's public relations talk for "wishing really evil crap on people"). I'm not proud of it... just honest about my humanity.
And the crazy thing is, for a while I thought I had some kind of supernatural powers. I would think things and they would happen. Like I have this one neighbor who is always 'roided up and likes to run over to my house and brag about things. One stormy day I was thinking how delicious it would be if lightning hit my neighbor's house. I didn't REALLY want lightning to hit his house. It was just a fleeting wisp of thought that evaporated as soon as I thought it. But then... BAM! To my utter shock, lightning actually did hit his house. It didn't do any real damage - but it cracked his bathroom mirror. I thought about the symbolism of that and thought maybe some higher power agreed with me that he was a self-centered braggert.
Not long afterward, another neighbor that had cheated us out of $1,400 (long story, maybe another post) drove home on a new motorcycle probably worth $1,400. As you might imagine, it made my blood boil. Oooh, I thought. Nothing good is going to come of that. He's going to wreck on that bike. And sure enough, a few weeks later he wrapped his motorcycle around a pole. He was damn lucky - a few cracked ribs, contusions... just enough bodily damage to make me think I should probably do whatever I could to keep any not-nice thoughts locked up far, far away from my consciousness.
Ah, but Mrs. Drew practically gave me a hairpin with which to pick that lock. For years she had used my husband's service to maintain her lawn. She never was one of those payers that paid on time, but because she was a neighbor, we cut her some slack. We knew she was going through some difficult times dealing with her mother's recent hospitalization. Two months, then three months went by without payment. We sent her a notice that we would have to stop maintaining her property until she paid something. We knocked on her door. Tried to call. After getting no response, we stopped service.
I think she thought she could do it herself. We saw her and her recently-hospitalized mother taking turns yanking a small push mower through the tall grass. It took them HOURS to finish the front lawn. The blazing Florida sunshine can be murderous.
That was the last time I saw them out there. Since then, I've seen the neighbor boy cut her yard once. My nanny said she thought that perhaps Mrs. Drew had suckered another lawn business into providing service, billing monthly of course. And then I thought to myself... she's going to lose that house.
The winds of karma returned. Turns out that Mrs. Drew's house is, like many Americans, now sliding into foreclosure. The lis pendens has already been issued. The eyebrow-raising part is that this house, a fortress of marble and granite, had been completely paid off, thanks to the former Mr. Drew, who had come to America on a boat from Cuba and built a successful construction company. After some nasty divorce proceedings, Mrs. Drew got the house... and promptly borrowed against it. There were parties galore, with roasted pigs and loud Cuban music. The house got another facelift, inside and out.
The writing's on the wall. Somewhere, Mr. Drew is smiling. And we are just shaking our heads wondering why Mrs. Drew couldn't just be a good neighbor and tell us that she couldn't or wouldn't pay for our services, instead of taking advantage of our kindness.
