Tonight, while pulling into the parking lot to go see my daughter dance, I backed into another vehicle. The parking lot is dark and the gray car was difficult to see. I wasn’t going fast and my back end bumped in to the other vehicle’s back end. I immediately pulled aside, put on the four-ways and checked for damage. Both cars had a couple of scratches. Now the decision to be made – walk away, go into the dance school, and forget about it, or……….. do the right thing.
My mind brought forth all of the lessons that my wife and I have been teaching our daughter. They can all be summed up in a single thought – Do the right thing even especially when no one is looking. All of my scout lessons when I was a leader, my talks at confirmation class, and conversations with my daughter led up to this moment. What type of character do I have? DO I practice what I preach? Would I be able to live with the Catholic guilt?
I chose to do the right thing. The dance school is in a small little strip mall with about five businesses. I checked the dance school employees and parents, I walked to all of the businesses – even the one across the street. I could not find the person. I started thinking of just leaving a note, but with Los Angeles actually getting rain today, I feared that the note would fall apart. I stood in the parking lot and waited.
The gentleman came from a business outside the area. Wait a minute, he shouldn’t have been using this parking lot. Did I think that? I need to remain focused on the task at hand. I informed the driver what happened and we pulled out our phones to use flashlights. Inside I was hoping that he would say, “Eh. It’s just a little scratch. Don’t worry about it.” No such luck. He looked at me and said, “Well this will have to be fixed. It will be $200.”
Wait! How does he know the price? He informed me that the car just came out of the body shop for the front end. We started talking about whether it should be through insurance. Now he states that it is probably $300. I requested a quote on paper. Now it is a wait and see game. He got in his car and left. While I wasn’t expecting a bunch of pleasantries, a “thank you for waiting around” would have been nice. I could not help but wonder if this person would have stuck around had the tables been turned. STOP, STOP, STOP. I can’t think that way.
So how does karma play in to this story? After sorting out the above incident, I went in to watch what was left of my daughter’s class. My phone vibrated and the notice stated that I had memories on Facebook. I scanned through them looking for something to lighten the mood. Instead…..
Facebook felt the need to remind me that three years ago something similar happened. A person had dinged my car and left a note. I contacted the person and he asked for a quote. He also had his son apologize for being careless. When I found that a ding not even the size of a penny would cost $700 (the body shop said it was because it was on a door), I told the other person to forget about it. The dad was happy and even told me he might not have been so nice.
People always talk about how “what goes around, comes around.” I always here people tell those who have been slighted, “Don’t worry karma is a b…. and they will get theirs.” It would be nice if karma worked the other way as well. I knew when I did the right thing that it would most likely hit the pocket-book. I knew that most people would not walk away from a new paint job. It would have just been nice if it felt better.