Couldn’t think of a good title for this thread, but what I’m getting at are things we do that “even out.” For example, I lose umbrellas all of the time and therefore I pick up umbrellas that other people have (obviously) left behind. Not stealing, just re-allocating.
Maybe this isn’t exactly what you’re looking for, but…I work as a cashier at a grocery store and once this old Japanese man had taken care to give exact change. As he handed the money to me he said, “Order, order in a chaotic world.” Ever since, I think of customers who give exact change as briefly increasing entropy in the universe, balancing out the lazy folks for whom I have to scrabble around for various coins.
Hubby orders sausage pizza. I like cheese only. So I pick the sausage off the pizza and feed it to the dogs as treats. It serves a dual purpose. Hubby gets the kinda pizza he wants, I get what I want and the dogs get what they want which is whatever we are eating. Yeah I’d call that even. 
There’s a comedian, Tom Rhodes I think, who said once that there’s actually only like 6 umbrellas in the world. You never buy one, you just find one on the street and take it, eventually lose it, then find another one. “Hey, looks like I’ve got the red one this time!” I’m starting to think he’s right.
As an undergrad in the late 70s, I did the same thing with umbrellas. It is nice to see others doing it now. I don’t do it anymore, as I have given up on umbrellas as likely eye-poker-outers (I am kind of clumsy).
I do all sorts of things that I call karma, but not in the classic sense of the word, I don’t think. For example, I almost always bring in a cart (sometimes two!) from the parking lot when I shop, for example. It “evens out” for the folks who leave them there.
This isn’t entirely like your example but I look at any bad luck or accidents I have as a sort of karma. Instead of focusing on how bad I have it because I lost a twenty dollar bill or hurt myself or did something else equally stupid, I just think back to things I’ve done in the past like steal, damaged property, hurt someone, etc and tell myself that it serves me right.
I don’t actually believe it *IS *karma but it’s the basic concept and it puts things in perspective.
My wife and I believe in “fast food karma.” If you 're given an extra item or two (or ocassionally a whole bag), you don’t take it back; eventually you will be shorted an item or two (or even a whole bag), so it all balances out.
There seems to be some rule of the cosmos that whenever I make out with a straight guy, as I find myself doing from time to time, I inevitably make out with a girl within, like, ten minutes. I’m sure the universe would slip out of alignment if this ever failed.
How does a gay male go about making out with straight man? Wouldn’t that be like attempting to push two positively charged magnets together?
The first time it was a guy whose girlfriend wanted to see him make out with another guy; he insisted that if he was going to have to kiss a boy, I was going to have to kiss a girl.
The second time, it was at a party, with a punk boy who I’d been crushed out on for a year casually mentioning that, although he liked to have sex only with women, he would flirt with anyone, and he considered making out a form of flirting. I was one happy little faggot that night, let me tell you.
Not so much to even out the Universe but because of my history as a computer programmer: I get oddly uncomfortable if I leave a conversation without “popping the stack.” If I’m talking with someone about beetles, and then the conversation turns to The Beatles, and then to Wings, and then to buffalo wings, I have to go back afterwards and say something about Paul McCartney’s band, and then The Beatles, and then about beetles. Because otherwise you’re left with dangling conversations and memory leaks. Which are bad.
And that is why I don’t recommend anyone become a computer programmer. It does things to a man.
This could explain why the umbrella I leave under my desk in case of a rainy day keeps disappearing.
I do not think that word means what you think it means.
Sometimes I put pennies in those trays on counter, and sometimes I take them away.
Sol, I can’t tell you how much I love this. This is why I keep coming back here.
I hold the door open. Our office is key-carded and actually keeps up with when the card is used. (Not that the PTB would ever *use * this against us poor employees. :rolleyes: ) My hours are 8 to5 but I get to work early, around 7:40. And if I see people swooping into the parking lot and hurrying to the door (late for 7:30 shift) I will hold the door open. So the Powers That Be can’t use this day against the late person. I’m not in a hurry, it’s basically the only time I spend outside, and I love seeing how a smile, a “Good Morning!”, and an open door make someone else’s day better.
I straighten retail shelves. Not compulsively, but if I’m looking at a display and something is out of order, I slip it back into place. One, I used to work retail so it’s kinda habit and, two, I figure I’m helping compensate for the really rotten customers…
I often let people go in front of me who are trying to merge into traffic, some days I don’t (the days I have enough “merge kindness” saved up in my driving bank.)
When I have spare change I charge up the parking meter for the next person before I leave. I think it works, as I’ve not had an expired meter ticket myself though my time has run out quite often.
Come ta think of it, isn’t there a Seinfeld episode where it was determined that Jerry is an “even-Steven?”
There’s a vending machine that we call “The Wheel of Karma” machine. It dispenses beverages that cost $1.25, but from time to time it stops believing in “coins.” Any coins you put in drop down to the coin return slot.
You can still get a beverage by inserting two dollar bills, but you don’t get any change. However, it does leave a 75 cent credit on the machine. The machine doesn’t believe in “coins” after all, and so while you might think that it would erroneously believe it had given change, it is above such coinish deception.
So the next person to come along puts in a dollar, and if they try to put in another dollar, the machine refuses, because that would put $2.75 in credit on the machine, and obvously that would be ridiculous! So this person gets to press the button and get a beverage for only a dollar, leaving 50 cents on the machine. And the next person gets a beverage for a buck, leaving 25 cents, and then one last person gets a discounted beverage. The next person, however, has to pay two dollars for their beverage.
The machine doesn’t have any indication of how much money is currently credited, so you never know where you are on the Wheel of Karma.
The next time the Beverageco guy comes to refill the machine, he fixes it, and it just becomes a normal, mundane machine, and believes in coins again . . . for a while.
I always hated bumming cigarettes. Then I worked as an extra on a movie a couple of years ago. One of the stars saw me smoking during a break, and bummed off me. He proceeded to bum off me every break for the next three weeks.
I think I generated enough cigarette karma to last a lifetime.
Now if only I still smoked…