CHICKEN KARMA

Roosting Chickens, Internet Domain

A lot of the old country wisdom the human race acquired during the agrarian age is sadly slipping into the dust bins of history.  My parents were part of a declining generation to grow up on a farm in central Kansas, so I still have distant echoes of this wisdom every now and then as the situation arises.  And some childhood memories still remain on a short leash, depending how much of an impression they left on my psyche at the time. 

Once I received a birthday bicycle, I rode that bike all over the neighborhood and even occasionally strayed beyond the outer forbidden fringes.  I also tested the boundaries of how fast I could maneuver it over the city streets and sidewalks.  On one very memorable day, I had almost reached warp speed on my bike as I made a sharp left turn onto a neighbor’s concrete driveway scattered with gravel.  The bike shot out from under me in an instant and the resulting fall left both of my exposed knees and elbows bloodied from sliding across the oversized sandpaper!  When I limped back into our house on that sunny summer day, all that my unsympathetic mother could say was “Well, it looks like the chickens have come home to roost.  I told you this would happen!”  It always excessively smarts when someone is chastising you and you know they’re right.

The consequences of our deeds generally catch up with us and “what goes around, comes around”.  That goes for both good and bad deeds.  It’s also been said that doing good is like scattering bread on the water.  Sooner or later it circles back around to us.  Kinda’ like karma.  Generally speaking, if you’re mean-spirited, bad things happen and if you’re kindly, good karma happens.

So it was with some neighborly texting today.  I was just made aware that someone I knew had contracted the Covid virus.  A neighbor sadly reported that a weekend beach trip resulted in being surrounded by people everywhere that were not social distancing or wearing protective masks.  We humans are relational beings, so we like to be social.  And it was noted that we’re all beginning to experience “quarantine fatigue” after months of isolation from one another.  After watching the feature group in the Scottish LPGA get put on the clock for slow play yesterday, I had texted earlier “let’s put 2020 on the clock, get a vaccine in play, and make the turn to toast 2021 together again!” 

And the hope is that we will all once again freely gather on the beaches, at sporting events, in our places of worship, at the mall, in airplanes, hotels and restaurants, etc.  But if there are still those who do not respect a very contagious virus among us, then “chicken karma” will be visited upon us and “the chickens will have come home to roost” once again.