My Karma Ran Over Your Dogma

There is an old story--I think it's from Midrash--about a wise rabbi and his apprentice. The two are travelling through the countryside, and stop at a rich man's house to seek lodging for the night.

The man is rich and miserly. He gives the rabbi and apprentice some moldy bread and water for dinner, some dirty rags for bedding and lets them sleep in the corner of a stone floor. The next morning, and rabbi thanks the man, and sends for workmen to repair a wall on the estate.

The next night, the two stop at the home of a poor and elderly couple. They have only a hovel, and their cow (their only possession) also lives in the hovel, as they have no barn. They give their won dinner to the travellers, as well as their own bed. The two elderly people go without dinner and sleep themselves on the dirt floor.

The next morning, they wake to find their cow is dead.

The apprentice cannot stand it. Once out of hearing, he turns to the rabbi and chastises him. "How could you let that happen? That mean rich man already has more than he needs, and you rebuilt his walls! And those poor people who gave us everything they had, how could you let their cow die? That was all they had to live on!"

The rabbi spoke quietly. "The rich man did not know that a chest of gold was hidden in the crumbling wall. If I had not had it repaired, he would have found that money and become even more wealthy and mean. As for the poor couple--it was the wife who was to die last night. Her life was spared in exchange for the life of the cow."

The apprentice was silenced.

I think about this story a lot--probably too often. Because I have this thing about flat tires.

Flat tires happen. They just happen to me more than to other people. I can just be driving down a road, inding my own business, when suddenly, the car gecomes incredibly sluggish. It doesn't accelerate the way it usually does. It feels like I'm driving in molasses. Nope--just another flat tire. Never a dramatic "bang" or anything, just a slowness to the car's response, and a slight increase in the road noise.

Yesterday I drove up my street, pulling toward the curb in order to avoid a sunken manhole cover/pothole, when all the sudden I'm hearing this loud and horrible "fwap fwap fwap fwap" from the undercarriage of the vehicle. I'm 5 feet away from my house, so I pull over immediately and jump out to examine what happened. A long piece of molded black plastic is sticking out from my rear passenger tire. The noise was probably the plastic banging around in the wheel well. It's held in place by about 2 inches of screw embedded into my tire tread.

My kidlets are jaded. At the first horrible "fwap" the older one says "What is that?" and the younger one says "That doesn't sound good." We all congregate around the injured tire, and the Bunny says in a resigned voice "I'll get the spare."

But it's getting to be bedtime, so I promise I'll check it in the morning. I did break off the black plastic thing--about 20 inches of something I still don't know what it was. Next morning, we check the tire--not flat. Okay, maybe we can drive it into the auto mechanic's up the street. We get one block, and --uh-oh, there's that molasses feeling again. We get out, examine the tire...

Hey! What's the deal? It's not flat.

No, the front tire is.

Fortunately, the auto mechanic's is walking distance from school. The Nice Man from the repair shop sends a tow truck, since I'm pretty sure it's just a matter of time before I have TWO flat tires.

Okay, so I'm unlucky with tires. REALLY unlucky with tires. I could feel persecuted by fate, until I think about that cow. Maybe I'm really lucky in some other way I don't know about, because the worse thing that could happen turns out only to be a flat tire. Or two.

LATER. I got a call from the repair shop. The front tire is pretty much ruined--can't be repaired. However, it was down to only about 1/32 inch of tread. The tire with the screw in it? It was at 3/32 inch of tread. The other two tires are just as bad, if not worse. Good thing we had such a dry winter, as this car would have been a sled on snow. Not only should ALL FOUR tires been replaced 6 months ago (wow--I really did dodge a bullet!), but they have the tires already in the shop, so there is no ordering delay! Hey, that's actually lucky! Plus, I'm only 200 miles from needing an oil change, so they can do it all at once! Save me another trip in! Keep my car safe for me and the precious little souls that travel with me every day!

So, I'm not exactly -- you know-- happy about this. But it could have been something So. Much. Worse.