In an effort to sort out all the bad karma I am almost certainly due because of nefarious past deeds, I’m going to attempt to tackle the problem head on by periodically apologising for them in my blog. They’re in no particular order; not chronological, nor in terms of severity. They’re just appearing in the order they pop into my head.

Apology #8

I remember when I was at school, and this one time we had just finished registration and we were about to go to first lesson. Anyway, as we were walking out to go to our first class, I found a key on the floor. It looked like a house key. What do?

House keys, by and large, are fairly important I think it’s fair to say. It would really suck to lose them. In fact, I think of all the keys, house keys could be considered the most important. They let you into your house. That’s a big deal.

So obviously we were looking at this key; no keyring, no number, no distinguishing characteristics. It looked like a standard key. The sort you see every day. And while looking at it, talking among ourselves, we touched briefly onto the subject of handing it in so the poor unfortunate who’d dropped it could possibly get it back.

But then we decided to drop it in the toilet instead. And not just a toilet. Not just any toilet. We looked in all four stalls and picked the most heinous one. The most abhorrent one. The most pungent one. The one that looked like a toilet cubicle from Mordor after a dozen orcs had got shitfaced and ordered a vindaloo without planning ahead and buying toilet roll. It was fucking lifting.

It’s weird how those two options came up isn’t it? Like, it was one or the other. It wasn’t, “Oh, well, we could hand it in, or we could maybe ask around, or maybe we could keep hold of it and see if anyone asks at afternoon registration?”. You could see how these options would fit together. They make sense. You know, three decent options.

Instead, it was, “Oh, well, we could hand it in, or we could just drop it into a toilet covered in shit and piss so that if the person who lost it happens to go in there they’ll see it and then they’ll have to rummage around in there up to the elbow in cess and it’ll be totally vile”. That’s like seeing an old woman struggling to cross the road and then instead of helping her you curbstomp a kitten. No middle ground; straight to the extremes.

Anyway, so just to clarify, this toilet was fucking foul and we were dicks to drop the key in there. But it was funny I guess. We were young, and you know, toilets are obviously hilarious, as is the thought of some poor schmuck being locked out in February in the snow or the wind or the rain. How long would they even be locked out for? Christ, I mean, my mother and father didn’t get home till like 6.30pm back then. That’s like two hours. Imagine if their parents were out even longer!

Anyway, so that’s the end of the day and nobody has asked about keys so I didn’t need to tell any lies about not dropping them into a toilet that more closely resembled something out of Silent Hill. All fairly legit. Standard day. I could leave it there if it were not for the twist in the tale. I hope you’ve been paying attention, kids, because if this was a Saw movie or whatever, this is the moment the flashbacks would kick in (you know, to spoon feed the retarded plot to.. well, retards).

I get to my door, reach into my bag, and notice my key isn’t there. Then, upon further inspection, realise there is a slightly bigger than key size hole in the bottom of my bag. Yes, the key which looked familiar because it’s the sort of key we see every day was familiar, and I did see it every day, because it was my key, and it was currently residing in the bottom of a toilet that was uglier than all the Kardashians added together and multiplied by David Gest. Velour tracksuit ugly.

And so I stood there, outside my house, for two and a half hours. Yeah, remember I said my parents usually got back at half six? That wasn’t just useless information. They usually were. But in an amusing twist, they were late. Because of the weather. Because it was snowing. Those of you who are lucky enough to know me will know that I don’t own a coat (and haven’t for… many years) so you’ll be glad to know that I was stood outside, in the cold, and snow, and wind, sans coat, for two and a half hours. Oh, and my brother was with me too. For some reason he was really pissed off. I can’t remember why. Maybe because his dickhead of a brother had lost his key and he had to stand outside in a whiteout waiting for his parents to let him in.

I never told him where the key actually went, incidentally.

Someone asked me before; “Why apologise for all these things? You’ve done so much evil that a few apologies isn’t going to make a difference”. Strong word is evil. I wouldn’t go that far. I’d be diplomatic and say that I’ve made a few misguided decisions. Morally ambiguous perhaps. And when I think about karma I don’t think any of my morally ambiguous actions provide such succinct proof of the existence of karma and how it can bite one on the arse quite like this one.

I was the chief architect of my own downfall. My nefarious actions were the cause; my standing in the snow for two and a half hours was the effect. I got my just desserts. What goes around comes around. And other clichés.

And so I’m not apologising for what happened to me. Fate had my number. I’m apologising for the intent. I had an opportunity to do the right thing, and I didn’t. I had a chance to do something good, and I didn’t. I’m apologising for that.

And also to my brother. Let me tell you kids, he was fucking sour.

:)