Karma And The Wet Shag With Pink Curlers And A Bathrobe--

All I can tell you specifically about the lady is that she hated kids because they squawked and made kid noises, and that she looked hysterical in curlers and soggy fuzzy slippers and a matching bathrobe. I never knew her name, I never knew if she had kids or a significant other. I never knew why she was angry all the time.

Nowadays, I would think to ask. I would wonder why a human being could be so bitter. Sometimes I would go out of my way to help understand and reduce the bitterness people display with their behavior.

But at ten, as a kid, all you really see is an ugly old woman standing in a doorway shaking her fist and yelling at you for basically being a kid.

You are in her yard retrieving a Frisbee.

Your yelling woke her from her nap.

You have no business standing in the street in front of her house, even if you are simply waiting to meet up with a friend coming from the other direction...

Sometimes I wonder if we as mischievous kids, were selected by karma to dole out proper punishment for this sort of behavioral epilepsy?

Sometimes I wonder if the black and white innocence of childhood can be considered sufficient justification for the punishments we conceived of and doled out with clever precision?

I think I have a solid list of the top ten meanest things I have ever done completed. I think I am finished adding to this list-- which makes the list a mind-relic and not a work in progress.

On that list is the time I told a Japanese youth that “I have a little dick” is a great pick-up line in English.

On that list is the time I kicked my older brother in the head while wearing a pair of steel-wheeled roller-skates.

There was a childhood eco-warrior incident involving a large piece of earth moving equipment, urine, some six month old rotten eggs, feces, and sugar that I wish I could take back. The sugar in the gas tank is what I wish I could take back. The rest just makes me proud.

Ahhh, the memories...

This woman was on that list. What we did to her was mean. What made it mean was how destructive it was. She deserved to be maltreated for the way she treated us. She didn’t deserve what flooded in to her living room.

This idea was from G and I think he had heard of somebody doing this to someone else. We all agreed the woman was a legitimate target in our war with those who wanted to disallow our existence. What we did was simple, but it required much stealth and forethought and the use of a dolly. We stole her garbage can. We took it home. We filled it with water and strapped the lid on to keep the water from sloshing out. We put it on the dolly and wheeled it down the street, down her sidewalk to her front door. We dragged it up the one step to the door, took the lid off, and leaned the garbage can over center against the door. When the door was opened inward, the garbage can was set to simply fall over.

We rang the doorbell and ran to some bushes directly across the street. The front door opened.

The garbage can-- full of rotten garbage once on the bottom and now floating on the top-- fell over. There was a huge WHOOSH sound (well, against the night’s silence) and the lady I never knew except when she was yelling and screaming at me stood completely in shock, her hair in big pink curlers, her pink bathrobe tied tight around her sizable belly, her matching pink fuzzy slippers now wet down and flattened against her floor tiles, her RECESSED LIVING ROOM taking the tainted water like a giant pothole, her brilliant white shag carpet not so brilliant or white or shaggy anymore...

We hid for a short time and then ran, thrilled with our successful countermeasure.


Now. I’m not so sure.