Karma

A while back, my Mom was awakened by a loud "crack" in the night. She searched her home for something that may have fallen and made the noise. Nothing. A week or so later she was cleaning the spare bedroom when she discovered the floor had collapsed along the exterior wall. A two-inch gap ran the length of the room and the drywall around the window and in the corners of the room was cracked. She peered into the abyss and was able to see clearly into the crawlspace under the house. She immediately alerted her landlady who said she would send someone over to look at it.

A few days later a "repairman" came over to assess the damage while Mom was at work. The landlady called Mom to say that her man believed he could fix the problem by placing a sheet of tar-paper over the crevice. Mom tried in vain to explain to the landlady (Ann) that the house was falling in on itself and needed more than a bandaid to cover up the problem. Mom asked Ann to simply come see for herself, but Ann said she trusted her handyman's opinion. Sure enough, the man crawled under the house and began his patchwork. In the process, he knocked over a curio of antique family heirlooms and elephants that Mom collected over the years, breaking many of them. Also, the crack spread into the living room, running nearly the full length of the house. The siding began to pop off of the exterior of the house as well. Mom called Ann to complain and to say that if she would just come see the damage for herself, she would know the true nature of the house's condition, which Mom deemed unsafe. Again Ann refused, saying she was too busy.

Too busy to walk 20 feet from her house to Mom's? That's right. Ann lived next door and still refused to look at the damage herself, denying that it was a big deal. So Mom looked for other housing. She found a neat place in the country with a fenced yard for her dog and some privacy for her. She needed her security deposit by move-in day or else they would rent it to someone else. So Mom told Ann that in two weeks she would be moving and that she would need her deposit back so she could apply it toward the new place. Ann refused, saying that she needed 30 days notice, that two-weeks wasn't enough. Mom lost out on the new place and began her house search anew. With three days to go until moving day, she still had not found a place to go. Ann asked, "Why did you put in your notice, then?" Mom told her it was because Ann's insistence on having 30 days notice already cost her one house, and that she didn't want that to happen again. Ann conceded that she may have made a mistake not letting Mom move early. To Mom, the admission was too little- too late.

Luckily, Mom found a place with only one day to go before moving day and she likes it very much. She has driven by the old house occasionally to see if its been fixed or rented out to some other unsuspecting soul. Today on her lunchbreak, Mom was doing a drive-by when she saw that alas, the house was gone. Wiped from the face of the earth. She guessed that a sheet of tar-paper proved to be slightly inadequate for fixing a house falling in on itself. Maybe Ann decided to take a look afterall. Some call it Karma. Mom calls it sweet justice.

The End.