I have a friend who is a force for all goodness, and, in return, constantly receives back happiness and light from the Universe. I, however, must be sending out the cosmic equivalent of chain letters, head lice, and invitations to join pyramid marketing schemes, because I seem to suck in dumb bad luck with the magnetic force of an unmeasurable black hole. Why else would I end up looking like a Jackson Pollock painting in Home Depot?

Honestly, I walked into the paint department with the intention of picking out a shade of currently fashionable gray to paint my soon-to-be textured brand new sheetrock. I walked out stained, soggy and emotionally scarred. It took maybe 12 minutes.

It starts when the ding-a-ling paint counter girl puts a blop of wet paint on the lid of the miniature sample can of the first color I’d picked out. Except she didn’t dry it or tell me it was wet, and I immediately get paint all over my hand. Then, she’s giving me a paper towel and sloshes the open container of the second color onto the front of my black t-shirt. In the ensuing melee, I smear the third color up my other arm. It’s like I’ve been dropped into a really bad Three Stooges movie.

As she’s trying to salvage the counter and floor, I’m in the ladies room trying to replicate the deep cleaning action of a Maytag front loader to save my shirt. Of course, some mom walks in with her baby while I’m half naked in front of the hand dryer trying to blow dry to a point of wear-ability and she’s snickering at me. Okay, from a woman who has probably been burped up on no fewer than six times that day, I can probably take that.

So I couldn’t get all the paint out. I couldn’t get the shirt dry. I couldn’t remember where my dignity had gone. I couldn’t help but think I was developing an allergic rash from the hardware store bathroom hand soap. And I couldn’t stop wondering what exactly I’d done to make Karma hate me so intensely.

Of course, my eternally sunny friend reminded me that, in the end, I did get 10% off my paint samples to make up for the mess. Honestly, I think I might hate her.