Contributed by Cindi Pearce, Catalogs.com Info Guru

Sometimes you just can’t help yourself and are compelled to get even, which might be a good idea. Or a bad one.

Here are 10 options to consider before you take action, which may help you decide whether to strike or turn the other cheek:

10. Forgive and forget

Okay, that one didn’t work. However, don’t underestimate the power of forgiveness. As they said about Eleanor Roosevelt … “She got even in a way that was almost cruel. She forgave them.” Quote attributed to Ralph McGill.

9. Hold a sale

Lockergnome.com recommends that you place an ad in your local newspaper advertising a huge garage sale at your adversary’s address. Note in BOLD letters that the sale begins at 6 a.m. sharp on Saturday and describe in elaborate detail all the wonderful antiques and electronic items that can be had for practically nothing.

8. Do nothing

This might really be the way to seriously annoy a person, who anticipates that you are going to come after her, one way or another, and is preparing her counterattack well in advance. Keep her waiting. She’ll get nuts wondering when you are going to lower the boom. Not engaging, ignoring her, keeping out of the fray and/or taking the high road are certainly worth considering. As many quotes as there are about the sweetness of revenge there are even more quotes based on the utter futility of it. So let go, let God? Well, it’s something to consider.

7. Voodoo

Get creative and craft a voodoo doll. The target of your revenge doesn’t have to know about your sinister albeit pleasurable creation. Only you will know that you are nightly sticking her in the private parts with a razor sharp object as you growl, savoring sweet revenge. Furthermore, creating a replica of your target, devising a dreadfully ugly version of her (or him) can be extremely therapeutic. You can make the doll as fat as you wish. Toss in warts and a big nose. This may sound rather perverted but taking out revenge, privately and quietly (voodoo dolls do not yell back), may be far preferable than doing something that’s going to get you tossed into the hoosegow and facing vengeance-seeking remorse in the morning. Smile for your mug shot!

6. Plant contraband

Buy something embarrassing – the biggest adult sex toy you can find works well. Wrap it in tin foil. Hide it in the suitcase belonging to your adversary. As she goes through the x-ray machine at the airport, the tin foil will shield the contents, which requires that it be unwrapped and inspected by airport security.

5. Stinkbomb

Of course there’s always the limburger cheese under the front seat of a car on a very hot day option.

4. Age well

“You are not permitted to kill a woman who has injured you, but nothing forbids you to reflect that she is growing older every minute. You are avenged 1,440 times a day,” so said Ambrose Bierce. Don’t grow as old as quickly or as fat or wrinkled as she and hang onto your teeth. That’ll help soothe the pain.

3. Stay cool-headed

Keep your temper in check and do as Robert F. Kennedy recommended: Don’t get mad, get even. Remembering to keep yourself on the right side of the law at all times, causing no actual physical harm to anyone (mental harm, uh, well, okay, because it is payback time) or property damage, carefully plot your revenge. You have to be smarter, savvier and more patient than your adversary. Some might call it lying in wait, but don’t actually do that because that’s on the other side of the law and could get you in deep doo doo. Take your time. Your adversary will eventually slip up and open the door, one way or another, for you to make your move, whatever you choose that move to be. An opportunity will present itself, and you have to pay attention so you know exactly when to strike.

2. Steal him/her back

Steal him/her back. Resource: The movie “It’s Complicated,” starring Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin. Baldwin leaves Meryl for a young hussy. Ten years later, Meryl is doing quite fine, thank you, on her own; Alec is somewhat miserable with his not-so-young but still a harridan trophy wife. He and Meryl get drunk and end up in bed. They have a covert affair. This time around, Meryl is the “other woman,” and is stealing her husband back from the woman who stole him the first time around. That is a pretty darned righteous way of getting even. The shoe is decidedly on the other foot now.

1. Live well

Living well is the best revenge. I wish I’d come with that on my own but credit goes to the Talmud.

Alternatively, as Jean Baptiste Poquelin Moliere said: I will not leave you until I have seen you hanged. If your adversary is a total jerk, she, or he will probably hang themselves with no help from you. In other words, give them some rope; lots of it.

“In the long run, every man will pay the penalty for this own misdeeds.” — Epictetus