“You are a child of The Universe. No less than the trees and the stars … and blah, blah, blah.”
That’s real sweet, those words from Desiderata, but what happens when The Universe kicks you out of its cosmic embrace?
When I am one with The Universe and in the cosmic groove, alarms go off when they’re supposed to, dogs and people don’t snap, there’s no yellow jacket hiding under the lip of my can of soda, and no line at the post office. When I am one, the ferry waits for me and dead car batteries come back to life in response to my whispered, “please, please, please don’t be dead.”
Getting drop-kicked
Then “wham!” For no apparent reason, The Universe kicks me to the curb and everything that normally goes right in my happy little world goes haywire.
I fell out of the cosmic groove a few weeks ago. It started when I lost my cell phone and I didn’t have time to look because I was already late for a doctor’s appointment off-Island. Losing a cell phone is no big deal, so I didn’t suspect that The Universe was about to give me the old heave-ho.
Then my left sock kept sliding down into my shoe as I crossed a parking lot and I had to stop every three steps to pull it up. Again, no big deal. But wait! It gets worse. When I decided to just take the damn socks off, I realized I was wearing two different shoes. I hoped the doctor wouldn’t notice, which he didn’t because he wasn’t there.
“I left several messages on your cell,” the receptionist said, trying not to stare at my shoes. By then I knew I was out of the groove, so no surprise that it took almost two hours to get to the North Ferry from Riverhead because there are no green lights for the person who’s not one with The Universe. Every third vehicle in front of you is a tractor and all lights turn red just as you get to them.
I won’t bore you with all that went haywire during the few days that The Universe shunned me, except to say that everything I picked up I dropped, everything I poured, spilled, every number I dialed was wrong, my silk flowers were attacked by aphids and I lost one of my glued-on nails in an 8-pound bag of trail mix.
There is no fix
The worst part of being shunned by The Universe is that you can’t barter or bribe your way back into its good graces. This is not a karma kind of thing. I deliver meals on wheels, hold the door for people, turn the other cheek and maintain my six-foot distance. I say please and thank you and my prayers. I even wait patiently and smile tolerantly at wobbly bicyclists on New York Avenue. But none of that matters, because when The Universe is not on your side, forget it.
To quote Flo from Mel’s Diner, “Face it honey, sometimes good karma don’t count fer squat!”
Eventually, I was let back into the fold. It happened when I was at Kmart in Bridgehampton looking for camping equipment. A futile off-island trip because when The Universe is not your friend, no store has what you are looking for.
What I did spot though, on the way out empty-handed, was a sale on these little waxy, melty things you buy to make you think your house smells better than it really does.
“Oh, wow!” the cashier said, “these are just one cent.”
“No,” I told her, “they are $2.49, but it’s a buy-one, get-one-free sale.”
The cashier turned the register screen so I could see that they’d rung up at one cent each. That couldn’t be right. She grumbled, but to appease me, voided the transaction and rang it again. Same results.
But wait! It gets better. When she totaled it out I got a penny off, because it really was a BOGO sale.
I opened my mouth to speak but she stared at me over the top of her glasses with an expression that said, “Lady, don’t start with me, I am out of my groove and just looking for someone to smack.”
Finding my way back
So I thanked her and handed her a penny (which miraculously appeared in my pocket) and headed for home, keeping an eye out for tractors.
The first light I hit turned green just as I pulled up to it, but I didn’t want to jump to any hasty conclusions. The Big U has tricked me before.
Then I came over that final hill and saw the South Ferry. Waiting. There was one car space open and the ferryman waved me onto the boat and right back into the cosmic groove again.
At least for now.
A former Associate Editor of the Shelter Island Reporter, Joanne has won multiple awards for her humor columns in both the Suffolk Times and the Reporter. Her essays have appeared in the New York Times, Southern Living, Cosmopolitan, Family Circle and other publications. She wrote a column, “Can We Talk”, in Toastmaster, a magazine for Toastmasters International, and was an award-winning humorist/commentator for WPBX radio in Southampton. She and her husband, Hoot Sherman, live on Shelter Island.
Illustration by Daniel Hannah via Pixabay
