Good Karma

I went to the Foothills Acoustic Music Institute's music workshop this past weekend to teach a Bluegrass Ensemble class. A great community of enthusiastic musicians and committed volunteers, it was a really fabulous time. Except I was deathly ill pretty much the whole time. It started with a small tickle in my throat as I drove to the camp, turned into full sinus congestion that night (ie., not breathing and therefore not sleeping), and then climaxing to a full-on fever with chills and sweats Friday night.Even now in the aftermath, I'm tapping this out at 2 am because my persistent hacking cough will not allow me to fall asleep. I did expect sleep deprivation as part of this gig, but yike.

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I do have to say that the camp was very fun despite this, and students, instructors and board members were all offering me drugs and homeopathic remedies of all sorts, to which I am eternally grateful.

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I still managed to power through, pacing my voice so that it was starting to give out by Sunday morning and gave out completely that evening after camp was done. I was hoping to go to bed early, but the miserable ritual of trying to clear my sinuses adequately kept me up until almost 10. At which point, my teenage buddy Blake, whose family's house I was gratefully crashing at, asked if I'd mind coming along so he could drive his girlfriend home. He doesn't have his full driver's license yet. Sure, I say in a cracked whisper.

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On the way back, he asks if I'd mind if he stopped at 7-Eleven to grab a slurpee.Who am I to say no? I might as well stock up on fisherman's friends. But when I get inside, I realize I had dumped my purse out at the house and forgotten to put my wallet back inside. And the credit/debit machine doesn't work. I ask Blake if he can pay for me, but he only has enough money for his slurpee. There's a group of random teenagers floating around the slurpee machine, about to leave, and a girl says loudly, 'Come here'. Her friends are ahead of her, so I'm not sure whom she's talking to. But she beckons and gestures for me to put the lozenges on the counter.Really? She nods impatiently. I thank her profusely, genuinely touched by this young person's random act of kindness. No problem, she says. You sound like you really need it.

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True enough. That girl has earned mega-karma points, said Blake. I have to agree – though I am also grateful for the gestures made by the great folks at the FAMI camp, it was particularly touching to receive this kindness from a person who I will probably never see again, completely outside any of my circles of community, who I likely have nothing in common with aside from basic demographics. We're people, and we both know that getting sick sucks. But this certainly helps it suck just a little less.