Here is my rambling for the week and I’m all worked up about it. Yesterday was one of those days where I just couldn’t catch a break. You know when all the little things go wrong and the whole world is scheming to make your life more difficult. And they were, the people of the world, scheming to piss me off. And it almost worked, like when the girl and I are on the subway and it’s late and we get to our stop where we’d get drinks and food because she was hungry from working a double shift. We get to our stop and the doors open and people pile onto the train, without letting us off, because they’re in some goddamn hurry or something, then the door controlling lady in the black boxed door controlling room on the train in front of us, thought it’d be awesome to close the doors and proceed on down the track without letting us get out. So we missed our stop, myself and the lady who’s tired from working a double shift, and so we had to get off at the next stop and turn around.
What happened was, when we got on the train in the beginning, we had to wait for a while because the train controlling people were in the midst of a shift change and the door-controlling woman in my car showed up late for work. Apparently she thought she’d get things back on schedule by trimming the stopping time at each station. Two things went wrong here; the pushy people getting on the train should have let us out first, a common courtesy in the train-riding world. Second, the door woman need not punish train-riding patrons because she was late to work. So we got off at the next stop brooding with the devil’s intent and revenge on our mind’s and we rushed off the train to where the door woman had her head stuck out the window, and I say to her, with anger and a sharp tongue, “little quick on the door trigger tonight aren’t ya?” Boys, I showed her.
We cab’d it back to our original destination because it’s Boston in dead winter and the cold was making my bones ache. We roamed in and out of bars in search for grub, damn was it cold. We got to one place and I thought I’d be nice and open the door for the lady so she could get out from the cold first, but instead these two old guys barreled out while I held the door for them, leaving the lady out in the cold. And so they barreled past me as I held the door for them, my ears perked for a quick “thank you,” but I was left wanting as they passed without even a thankful glance. So I thought I’d show them and teach them a lesson, so I say to them, with sarcasm and a sharp tongue, “yeah, uh, you’re welcome!” Boys, I showed them.
We found a place to eat at this joint called Charlie’s that was jam-packed with drunk hippies and infomercials on the tube. We found two seats at the bar and I stacked our coats on the stool next to me because it was either there or on the bar that was sticky with Bud Light and cheeseburger juice. About five minutes later one of the servers walked by with a chair he was going to give the group behind us and he smacks my girl with it nearly knocking her off her stool. She says “ouch!” and we both look at him and he walks away. He works there, for Christ’s sake, he should at least feign apology. Then this drunk cat with a hunting hat and PBR in hand sits on the stool next to me where I had stacked our coats. It’s cool if he wants to sit there and all, I mean I was hogging it and the place was busy. But he sits right down and doesn’t say a word. At first I thought he had his drunk ass right on our stuff, but instead he knocked the jackets on the floor. So I look at him and I say in the nicest tone possible, “um, excuse me, do you mind if I reach under you and grab our coats that you just knocked on the ground.” “Uh,” says the douche, “go ahead.” I said, “thanks so much,” and he says “you’re welcome.” WTF right?! He knocks our coats onto the dirty ass floor and then says “you’re welcome?” This guy was a real prize.
And so that reminded me of earlier in the day when I was at the shoe store and I wanted to find my size in this shoe I grabbed off the display, and it wasn’t a cheap shoe either, and there were no shoe people in sight to go out back and get me my size. Then I start hearing voices and they’re coming from around this corner and I realize that the two employees are smoking and joking out back. The lady sees me, but doesn’t say anything, like maybe a “can I help you?” so I ask her if they had this in the appropriate size that I needed. She says nothing and goes out back. Five minutes later she’s back and says, nope, we don’t have your size and drops the display shoe in the corner by the register, then goes out back. So I said, “excuse me, miss, do you mind if I try on the display shoe because it looks like it might fit.” Now she looks annoyed and I realize that the roles have somehow been reversed, as I find myself trying to sell her on the idea that I want to buy these shoes and she’s reluctant about selling them. So she marches out back and gets the other shoe and they fit perfect even though it’s labeled as a much smaller size then I’m used to. I say, “I’ll take these, I don’t mind that it’s the display model because it fits right.” She reluctantly agreed to sell me the shoes that I had to convince her to sell me, with which it is her job to sell me in the first place. As she, almost regrettably, scanned the bar code and told me the price, she said, unaffectionately, “slide your card.” I’m looking around for the credit card machine and I see it’s buried under a pile of papers. I move the paper and scan my card, she bags the shoe box, then tosses the receipt inside and doesn’t say a word. So I said, “thanks, have a nice day,” and she replies with, “you’re welcome,” and I walk away. Then I’m like, WTF mate?! Did I just thank her for reluctantly selling me a pair of shoes for which she gets paid to sell me in the first place, then I wished her a good day and all she could say was, “you’re welcome.” Oh yes she did. What is this world coming to?
And so the girl and I pay the bill at Charlie’s Cheeseburger joint and leave the smelly hunting hat wearing patrons alone with their PBR and disaffectionate social skills, hail a cab and make our way back to my apartment. And now, I like to be nice and so I’m shooting the bull with the taxi driver and we pass a billboard for this one-man show where this guy recites The Great Gatsby. I spent the entire ride home debating the merits of Gatsby and defending it as one of the great American classics. The cabbie disagrees and we enter into a discussion about literature and he pulls this giant book out from the front seat. Evidently it was some history of some famous artist that he loved and thought was fantastic and I flip through the book from the back to the front, and I’m thinking about how much this guy’s art sucks. I say, “he seems like a minimalist,” because that’s what it looked like to me. Boy did he disagree with that. “He would be very angry if you called him that.”
And so the cabbie actually turned out to be pretty cool and old and was some kind of taxi-driving art afficionado, but I liked him. He showed the girl and I respect even though we disagreed with him on numerous things. He dropped us off and we left him with a generous tip. You know, we don’t have to like everybody we run into as we wander through our selfish little lives, but we should always show respect, even, or especially, with people who don’t share our views. I don’t care so much if you purposefully knock my coat on the ground, but when you get busted red-handed, at least pretend to be sorry. That goes a long way. And if you find yourself working in a shoe store and you, for whatever reason, don’t want to sell me a pair of shoes, at least pretend like you do, because that’s your job. It’s not my fault you’re not happy with where you work, I treated you kindly and with respect and I just ask for the same in return. That’s all we can do for one another, as strangers walking through this strange strange world, to treat ourselves with a little respect. Is that too much to ask?
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