"What goes around comes around."

I have not been able to find the author of this familiar quotation. It certainly wasn't original in Justin Timberlake's song title of 2007. Going back a little further to Susan Roane (US management consultant, writer, in "Words of Women Quotations for Success," by Power Dynamics Publishing, 1997.) "They say, 'You can't give a smile away; it always comes back.' The same is true of a kind word or a conversation starter. What goes around, comes around." Again it is not original material.

It may be that no one knows. Said What? (http://www.saidwhat.co.uk/quotes/) declares it to be anonymous and no one gives estimates as to how long it has been in use. I can remember hearing it for the first time in the mid 1960's. The man who used it said it like he had been using it all his life.

Whatever meaning it held back then has been greatly increased with the advent of the internet. On the web things can literally go around the world and come back in seconds. Take a joke I read on the internet 5 or 6 years ago. It was anonymously written and had been around for some time before it came to me. I liked it and saved it, and now it is time for it to go around again:

      A man came barging into the room and with slurred speech said, "Doctor, I'm not feeling very good."
     "You've been drinking too much," the man in the white jacket replied. You need to get some good food and some hot coffee and you will feel better."
     "What kind of a Doctor's offish is dish?" the inebriated man asked.
     "It isn't a Doctor's office," the man in white answered. "This is a restaurant kitchen. I'm the chef."

Maybe if this goes around enough someone will rewrite it. Somehow it doesn't seem as funny this time.

Joke writing is a special writing skill that average writers like myself do not possess. Still, I have been compelled to try off an on. Once when I was making Chili I thought of something funny that would make a good joke. But the stove top was too hot and the chili needed constant stirring, so by the time it cooled a little I had forgotten the joke. If you had been in my kitchen that day and you like spicy hot chili, you would have loved mine. The joke you may not have cared for, it wasn't that hot.

Riddles should be easier to write, they are shorter right?

Why couldn't the Alzheimer's patient tell a good joke... No, forget that one.
What did one ostrich say to another at the South Pole?
"Whatever you do, don't stick your head in this white stuff... It will freeze your ears off!

Just remember, that was written late at night. So much for that.

Back to the subject at hand. Originally, I believe "What goes around comes around" was given as a cautionary statement. If you do something bad to someone, eventually someone is going to do something bad to you. However it is used freely to mean just about anything that can be passed along to another person.

Leaving the negative connotations, it can be a very positive thing. If you do good things for others, eventually someone is going to do something nice for you. And if someone does something nice for me, I should want to pass it along, and do something nice for someone else.

Such are the things that are being done for me in my house as I write. I already have a nice new roof on my house, replacing the one that hurricane Charlie tore loose. Now the ceilings are being replaced and the drywall at the base of the wall where a pipe broke. This is being done by people from LASER, the Lake And Sumpter (counties) Emergency Recovery. What has been going around has come around, and I am so thankful.