Karma--You Give Some, You Get Some

Tonight at the grocery store checkout, I decided I didn't want a bag of Goldfish crackers. And instead of putting it back in the aisle where I got it, or at least giving it to the checker and explaining my change of heart, I stuck it on the magazine rack. I only had an hour to get groceries, take Louie to the park, eat dinner, and get to a night class at UCSD.

The checker saw me stash the Goldfish in front of Laura Bush, and said, coldly, "If you don't want that, could you please hand it to me?" Yikes. I would have done that originally, but said checker is one I usually try to avoid (except I couldn't tonight, because her line was shortest, and I was in that one-hour hurry). She is a militant checker, telling customers to single stack their soup cans, and not load the belt too wide. Tonight I got off easy; all she did was instruct me to carry my bag of strawberries alone in one hand so they didn't get squished. Off I slouched to the parking lot.

Where I redeemed myself, by pushing my shopping cart all the way to a return chute, rather than ditching it in an empty parking space.

Turns out my karma's still pretty good. ONTHEBUS decided to take one of my stories. There were two SASEs in the mail, and the thicker one was a rejection (a no-thanks slip, along with info about entering their latest contest [because they liked my first story so much?]).

The piece forthcoming in ONTHEBUS is something I read an early draft of aloud in my Squaw Valley house late one night. I was then selected for critique in Sands Hall's open workshop, where I got the valuable feedback that made it publishable.