Karma Cleanser - December 26 2007

Dear Karma Cleanser:

So I’m standing in line at the post office, and the place is basically a war zone. Everyone in town – including myself – had apparently waited until the Saturday before Christmas to get all their gifts in the mail. The line stretched back for miles, and people were pretty touchy about it.

I get up to the area where there’s this counter where people can prepare their packages and fill out forms, and I look down and see that someone has left a stack of about 15 greeting cards on the counter, still without postage. I look around to see if I can spot the person who forgot the cards, but I have no luck. The name on the return address says they’re from somebody named “Martha,” and, I’m not trying to be racist, but none of the people around me looked like a “Martha.” Everyone else in the place was either African-American or Hispanic.

So for just like a second I think maybe I should pick up the cards and put postage on them and send them out myself like as a gesture of goodwill. But before I have a chance to pick up the cards, the lady behind me beats me to it. She picks them up and asks out loud if someone is forgetting something. A woman ahead of us in line turns around in a panic, and she’s obviously embarrassed that she’s lost her stuff. And this is when I get embarrassed because she’s also an African-American lady, and I had jumped to the conclusion that her name couldn’t possibly be “Martha.”

So, long story short, I feel I had a chance at scoring some good holiday karma, but I blew it.

– – Lost in the Mail

As punishment for being racially insensitive, may your holiday packages not arrive until well past MLK Day. Actually, we’re kidding. You still scored some karma points just by intending to take on the task of mailing out the lost letters, even if you didn’t get a chance to do so. You also learned a valuable lesson: Stay out of the post office during the month of December.

Dear Karma Cleanser:

(In response to “Crappy Tanks-giving,” the letter writer whose Turkey Day gathering got spoiled by too much wine and honesty): I think you were way too hard on the friend group and you also didn’t take their guest to task for being so rude.

A new boyfriend should know better than to shoot his mouth off the first time he meets his lover’s circle of friends. To me, it just shows that “Nell” would probably be better off not only with a different man but also with better role models in her peer group.

– – Cry to Heaven

Wait, didn’t you just say we were too hard on the friend group? Call us picky, but “Dump your boyfriend – and all your friends!” sounds like a hard pill to swallow.

Been bad? karmacleanser@gmail.com