Monday, July 26, 2010

I Woke Up Laughing

Yesterday morning, I woke up laughing while dreaming of something that happened back in 1976, when I was in my early twenties.

Have you ever done something devilishly delightful in your life that later came back to bite you in the ass?

Yeah….isn’t that fun?

It’s called KARMA.

While living in NYC, I had a studio apartment on the upper east side that faced a courtyard garden. It was on the third floor of a four story walk-up. Below me lived an elderly Russian woman, who other than this incident that I’m about to share with you, never said so much as two words to one another in the three years I lived there.

Sometime during the third year of residing in this building, my partner and I adopted a cat. Neither of us having ever had a cat before, were somewhat unaware of the whole “litter box involvement” of keeping it clean. Being in our twenties, we didn’t care if the poop piled up for two days because we were both too busy trying to become famous actors on Broadway.

Most of the time we would do the normal thing, by sifting the poop out of the litter box and either flushed it down the toilet or disposed of it in the trash. However, sometimes I would sift it and simply throw it out one of our windows because I figured it would just land in the garden below, becoming fertilizer for the grass.

(I thought I was doing my part in recycling)

Yet, what I hadn’t remembered was that the woman who lived below us had a small terrace that extended out from her back door, which meant that all the poop I was throwing out the window was actually landing on her terrace floor. God only knows what she must have been thinking everytime she saw little tootsie rolls cascading from the heavens.

I don’t know how long it took her to finally catch on that it was me throwing cat feces out my window, but one day my partner and I heard a loud BANGING at our apartment door. And when I opened it, guess what I saw?

I saw an angry little Russian woman, holding a folded piece of The New York Times. And when she opened the newspaper, I saw all the poop I had thrown out the window that morning.

She said, “Excuse me, but does this belong to you?”

I stood there with my mouth wide open; turning a bright color of NEON red.

She then said, “Yes, I thought so. And if I ever see any SHIT on my terrace again, I will contact the property manager.” And then proceeded to take the newspaper and SHOVED it in my hands.

I closed the door and turned to look at my partner, saying, “Oooops!” Then the two of us laughed until we thought we were going to die.

So, remember something everyone….

Don’t EVER throw cat poop out your windows. Because trust me, it will only come back from whence it came.