Robert Howlett:
Isambard Kingdom Brunel Standing Before the Launching Chains of the Great Eastern
(1857)

"Maybe there's always a Comeuppance."

The term Comeuppance suggests two players, one receiving and one delivering, but since I started this series three weeks ago, I’ve noticed that some Comeuppances seem more like the solo variety. At first, this felt like pounding one’s head against that proverbial brick wall, but this kind of Comeuppance doesn’t quite work like that. Some activities just seem to have some Comeuppance built right into them, as if the Comeuppance was an integral part of the experience, cause and effect so tightly coupled as to seem inseparable. I was reminded of this this morning when an old friend texted me that my email inbox reported itself full when he tried to drop me a note. Emails have always been my foil. I have not yet learned how to elegantly manage them, so they tend to manage me, and rather hostilely. I forever lose incoming mail, miss important messages, and get chastised by the sender. The same happens with voicemails and text messages, too; each silently builds a queue until it overwhelms the technology’s capacity to cope. Then an old friend or an upset creditor sends a note via another medium, and a self-inflicted Comeuppance begins.

I have received innumerable lectures on the proper ways to manage my message queues. Not one of them stuck. Each required technical talents beyond my meager collection, or a discipline I have never even imagined exhibiting. So I am blessed with feral message queues. The technique I might use to better manage my queues seems to involve regularly sorting through those messes, a habit I haven’t quite mastered yet. I forget I can unsubscribe from the more annoying emails until I’m finally driven to administer a crude mass extinction event: copying annoying sender address into the email search box to find messages from that sender, selecting then deleting the results with relish! I dispatch a few thousand with barely a twitch, but I also interrupt my usual routine, which disrupts my morning’s rhythm, a definite Comeuppance. These are never learning events, for I learn no better from surviving them. Deleting seems just as daunting now as it did before. The endless certainty of encountering these situations again and again and again feels like a definite part of this punishing Comeuppance.

The best I’ve managed so far has been a begrudging tolerance. I can acknowledge these events without blaming myself too much. I might finally be mature enough to accept who I am, and especially who I’m not, and never will become. I once believed Comeuppance was at least somewhat deserved, a form of punishment. Now I see that Comeuppances can visit me without necessarily rendering me anybody’s guilty party. I accept my busted inboxes with that certain grace I owe any inevitability. I no longer aspire to be a better steward of my long-beleaguered data. It is whatever it is and also whatever it eventually becomes. It might-a if I had-a, but I didn’t and I won’t. Comeuppances come with certain territory, and far be it from me to disagree with the fates on that reality. This class of Comeuppance isn’t governed by cause and effect, for the Comeuppance effect seems in no way contingent. It comes with the activity like gravy seems inseparable from mashed potatoes. They are a definite pair.

I thankfully quit smoking before its inevitable Comeuppance visited me. I could see it coming and recognized that smoking was at best a young person’s sport. My son nudged me away from the precipice when he asked me if I was trying to kill myself with cigarettes. It’s necessarily impossible to wrestle with such an impossible-to-answer question. Other occurrences are widely viewed as accidents, but they seem more like inevitable outcomes of repeating certain actions. The base jumper, who unfortunately slams into a rocky ridge, could have eliminated the risk of ending his life that way had he merely stopped jumping off the top of mountains. His Comeuppance wasn’t certain, but it was certainly more likely as long as he maintained that practice.

Doing the dinner dishes often feels like a Comeuppance, yet you can’t make a satisfying meal without dirtying a few dishes, and someone will definitely inherit that Comeuppance. It’s no real punishment, of course, unless or until the dishwasher frames it as such. It’s a definite change of rhythm, though, and, like my overflowing inboxes, it demands a break in the usual and customary rhythm to correct. This disruption can certainly feel like Comeuppance, especially when it forces me out of my reassuring trance and into involuntary servitude. Why can’t an inbox just delete any unsolicited messages after a defined time? Those hundreds of retained emails notifying me of what’s coming to my mailbox later that morning seem easily enough identified. I receive plenty of ads for apps that are supposed to scrub my inboxes clean, but I distrust their judgment and their cost. Most insist they’re free until I try to download them and encounter the Comeuppance: “In-app purchases might be required to complete some functions.” Maybe there’s always a Comeuppance.

©2026 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Comeuppance, #PureSchmaltz