Coffee and Karma

COFFEE
1.) It has occurred to me that given the amount of overpriced coffee/tea/lattes I purchase in a day, I am single-handedly keeping BOTH Starbucks and Caribou afloat--as in all their other customers could leave and they'd still be in business because of me. This is a depressing thought.

KARMA
2.) If you don't take the el everyday, you're missin out, let me tell you. Because of a fire, normal train lines are down until god knows when so now I get to take the green line to the red line to the orange line just to get home. All I could think was, Wow, the directions are all in English, how easy. I'm also glad I was in attendance the day they taught colors in Kindergarten as the green line now runs on the brown line track, which is just one reason why the changes are hella confusing. I feel SO sorry for non-English speakers who need to get somewhere via el. I do, however, laugh at all the people standing at a station waiting for a train that is never going to come,--read the paper, people. Yesterday, exhausted by the extra hour added onto my commute by the transfers, it suddenly occurred to me why this was happening: KARMA. TRAIN KARMA. For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about....
I NEVER paid for trains in Japan. I played what we call the "gaijin (foreigner) card". I pretended I didn't understand any Japanese. I took $30 train rides for $2--looking innocently at the Japanese ticket man with feigned confusion--he'd know I was full of shit, I'd know I was full of shit, but he'd take my 200yen and let me through. Shameless. And I did it for two years straight--getting bolder as time went by. And I KNEW someday it was going to come back and haunt me and it HAS. Now that certain stations and parts of train lines are closed, when you get off the orange line, you feel like the city is being evacuated the way men in neon vests usher you out the doors and yell, "GO GO GO" to the crowds that run, pushing and shoving to the escalators. Then we all wind through the tunnel to the red line where more directions are shouted.
I have to wonder if only for a second: could I have caused this? Could I have racked up such a colossal train karma debt in Japan that now all of Chicago must pay?