Crossing the Line

“I’d like a double tall, half-caf….hold on a sec…no not you….what?....double tall, half-caf., low foam, high fiber…No way! I can’t believe he said that to you!....Wait, where’s my latte? Do you need me to repeat my order?” If your blood is not as boiling as the hot coffee I’m about to spill on all of those line-clogging cell phone junkies, I’m sorry that my little dramatization has gone over your head. Standing in line (or “on line” if you’re in New York where everyone else seems to be able to see some imaginary line on the ground leading up to every cashier, ticket window, and gyro cart) is frustrating enough without having your ears assaulted by the conversational table scraps of a would-be socialite who may as well be gabbing with the time-teller for as much substance as she’s transmitting through that cancer machine. I know this sounds harsh, but let’s be honest, if you’re waiting for someone to make change for a $20 because you just couldn’t live without a fresh role of Bubble-Tape, you’re probably not having philosophical debate about Jesus v. the Constitution with the person on the other end.

Not that I have a Marxist regard for service employees, but I find this behavior to be rude, largely because it is demeaning. Who do these people think they are that the poor barrista (Fritalian for “slave-wage coffee jockey”) doesn’t deserve their undivided attention when trying to serve them efficiently so they will get back out onto the street where they will be everyone else’s problem? If we’re honest with ourselves, you guys and gals would be cleaning that barrista’s toilets if you did not have someone else’s money to spend on gourmet French roast and oversized sunglasses. So it seems the least we could do is show a little human courtesy to the folks by whose good graces you are saved from having to figure out how to work that damn contraption in your kitchen with the glass pourer-dealie and the pouch with the black powdery-thingies in it.

I raise this issue because we’ve stumbled onto a societal prisoner’s dilemma. I too would like to be pouring over every detail of what I had for breakfast with whoever accidentally hits the “talk” instead of the “ignore” button when they see me calling. But I refrain because I’m not self-absorbed enough to commit the offensive behavior discussed above and still sleep at night (although who could sleep when there are so many interesting things to say about the piece of chewing gum I saw on the sidewalk this afternoon?). Other than personal shame (which, to be honest, has not been much of a barrier in the past), what’s my incentive not to pick up the phone as well? At least then I’d have something to distract me while Liz Smith over there narrates the menu to her conversation partner to help her decide which Egg McMuffin will go best with a Bloody Mary. And thus the problem snowballs to the point where our poor cashier has capitalized on our absent-mindedness to embezzle more than the GDP of Mauritania out of the change drawer.

Not that I’m shilling for Visa, but to illustrate my point, see if you can spot the most offensive person in this ad: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6332303939470321646&q=visa+commerical+food+court&total=2&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0&hl=en . I’ll give you 2 guesses. Then I’m calling in the soup nazi.

You Are a Waste of Space

Do you remember those clever signs on the Washington Metro that were made up words with fake definitions as public service announcements? My favorite was “escalump: n. a person who becomes a human speed bump by suddenly stopping at the top or bottom of Metro escalators.” Apparently the mass transit officials in town felt that not stopping to check your watch at the bottom of a crowded escalator was such an underappreciated social norm that they had to alert people to the proper way to ride a moving staircase (it really boils down to walk, stand there, walk again). If it were any easier a child could do it…wait…children can do it, which leaves you on very thin ice.

I have to say that I think this sign is very unfair to speed bumps. At least they help to slow traffic on dangerous roads and do not waste precious resources like air and food as do the humanoid forms of social detritus that we’re discussing here. It seems like any place that serves as a choke point is also a magnet for gatherings of the self-absorbed and oblivious. We saw a version of this when discussing our clogged city sidewalks. The same is true of a crowded restaurant entryway. By all means, please finish picking the broccoli out of your teeth and dumping the bowl of mints into your purse before moving your recently expanded waistlines out from between me and my three hours worth of complementary dinner rolls.

But we see this problem in other places as well. We’ve all seen the i-bankers so absorbed in conversation that they have to stop just outside the main entrance of a 50 story office building to finish sharing their brilliant insights into the role of agricultural commodities in their getting hammered at the bar in 20 minutes. It’s almost as if the further they get from the building, the dumber they become so they have to drop all of their impressive knowledge within a 5 foot radius of the front door. This theory makes sense given how dumb they seem to be by the time they get to the bar.

We also see a strange phenomenon in revolving doors. Turns out, there is some mechanism placed just inside the center pole that causes cell phones to ring only once, maybe twice at most. This is evidenced by the fact that no matter where a person is in the process of walking forward while also possibly pushing the door, he or she feels a keen sense of urgency about fumbling through every pocket on every garment on his or her person to answer the phone. “Logjam be damned, this could be Ed McMahon and if I don’t catch this by the second ring, I’ll never forgive myself.” Of course, the odds of it being Ed McMahon, or even a worthwhile long distance offer, are about as good as you using the word logjam, making the discounted, risk-adjusted value of this phone call about half a cent. So let’s make a deal. I’ll pay everyone a penny to just let it ring until they get through the door. You get some positive NPV out of the deal and I get a decent shot at putting my groceries away before the plastic bag handles sever the finger I would need to effectively communicate with you.

About Face

We are having a bathroom crisis in this country. It seems that more and more people are choosing to forgo this household feature, knowing that the subway will be a perfectly satisfactory place to carry out their morning regimen (not “regime”, as some of you over-achievers like to say…that would be a different kind of subway ride altogether). Either that, or people are confused by the name “bathroom”. Surely you can take baths in it, but you can also do so much more. You can comb your hair, brush your teeth, and put on your makeup. You can even put some salve on that flesh-eating virus that is causing your face to fall off in the seat next to me.

We’ve all seen these people. You’ll be in class and some girl will whip out a pleather bag filled with all manner of brush and powder and goop. She’ll jab at her face with each one for about 15 seconds and then move onto the next. After ten minutes she’ll look like the ‘tute you passed on your way to the hot dog stand because she looked too desperate. In the meantime, she’s stunk up the place with a stench reminiscent of Crabtree & Evelyn but mixed with like ammonia. And all this beauty is an ugly business. In the process of tarting herself up, this chick has felt the need to pick all the glop and schmutz off of each item in her accoutrement and flick it “down at her side” which functionally is “on your leg.” It’s the same thing as sausage-making, folks; no one wants to see the process and they have to be hung-over to appreciate the results anyway.

Sad to say the fellas are not immune from this disease either. Gentlemen, there are no holes in your head in which it is acceptable to stick your finger when you’re in public. If your ear or your nose or your trachea is bothering you, this is either a non-emergency, in which case there’s plenty of time to excuse yourself to the bathroom, or it is an emergency, in which case you should be using that finger to call 911. In either case, you should not be anywhere near me when your head is being serviced. I do not think I’m being particularly sensitive about hygiene here. If a guy sneezing in an elevator can cause SARS, surely the skin dander that you’re setting loose as you pick at your face could set off a fresh batch of leprosy. And now that I am on record, no one can say I didn’t warn them. When I’m hunkered down with a radiation containment suit and tissue boxes on my feet but am Ebola-free, who’ll be laughing then?

But there’s a part of me that has to laugh at the irony of this public grooming epidemic. Isn’t the point of getting ready before you leave the house to appear as you want to be seen by others? When you’re smearing lipstick across your cheek as the train makes a sharp right, the cat’s out of the bag. We know what you look like with makeup and without it, and frankly, we’re indifferent. But assuming you think there’s a difference, let’s put your best face forward and emerge from your hovel ready to receive the onslaught of judgment and disdain that we are waiting to hurl at you with a stiff and perfectly outlined upper lip.

Clothes that Make a Statement...That We'd Have to Bleep Out

This site is about to get a little blue. Brace yourselves; I’m going to tell you where you cannot wear jeans. I can already hear your indignant scoffing and you can just save it because I’m not having it. Spending $200 on indigo-dyed cotton does not make you look rich and it does not make you classy. It does make you a sucker. And I have absolutely no idea why being a sucker should qualify you for entry into the last bastions of civilized society like the opera, or a fancy restaurant, or a house of worship, or your great-aunt’s funeral.

On one level, I’m complaining because I don’t want to have to look at you in all your muffin-topped glory while I’m trying to pry my $40 worth out of the business end of a lobster claw. Most people have no conception of what they look like to others and most people wear jeans too often, which begs the question, did the fun-house mirror come with the jeans or is it just my good fortune that you happen to own both? Likewise, Gd may not care what you wear to commune with a greater power, but I would rather not spend the hour seeing you constantly adjust yourself in the next pew, so if you’d be kind enough to wear something that involves folding your hands neatly in your lap, maybe both our prayers could be answered.

Even more than the fact that your sartorial impropriety is an eyesore to the general public, there is something sinister which transforms this indiscretion from a fashion faux pas into outright violation of your obligations under our social compact. By wearing denim without regard to time, place, or occasion, you are sending a signal to the world that this gathering is no more important to you than loafing around on your sofa watching a NASCAR re-run from 1997. True as this may be, it is rude to flaunt it in others’ faces. Those little old ladies did not spend fours hours in a salon gettin their hair did just so you can roll straight in from plowing the back 40 with a toothpick hanging out the side of your disrespectful mouth. Which brings us to the second point you will try to make in the midst of your self indulgent whining. “Why you gotta narc [do the kids still say this?] on my good time? Why can’t you just let me be who I am?” Well if who you are is a self-centered slob, then be my guest, just be yourself in private, or in a saloon, or in Canada.

If I haven’t given you reason enough to buy a pair of real pants, consider the fate of Britney and Justin. After stepping out in the best blue-jean patches that could be sewn together by third-world refugees living in a garage in east LA, this May-June romance wound up on the same trash heap of cultural scraps that produced the outfits they were wearing. So the moral of the story is, if you don’t want to end up 40 pounds heavier and back in the double-wide where you started, let’s show a little decorum in public.

Put Your Bun Back in the Oven

I think this would be a good opportunity to clarify the record on a few things. It’s not that I don’t like children; it’s that I don’t like your children. To be specific, I don’t like the way your children behave. To be more specific, I don’t like the way that your inept parenting has created an army of pocket-sized hooligans (in certain parts of the Spanish speaking world, they say “bichos” which translates to “critters”) scuttling about under foot causing untold spoilage to the world’s supply of seersucker fashions. Parents these days seem to have decided to raise their children free-range, allowing them to pitter patter around any locale no matter how public, or crowded, or dangerous and to rub their grubby hands all over anything that catches their fancy no matter how shiny, or pointy, or mine.

In the event that parents are simply misinformed about the quality of their child-rearing skills, let’s take a moment to provide some helpful feedback.

Your children are not cute. I know you thought that mewling, puking bundle of joy you brought home from the hospital was so adorable that you could just eat it up, but you are the only one. No one else in the room was wearing their pregnancy goggles; they were just glad to see you had quit craving Chunky Monkey with roasted red peppers on top and didn’t want to say anything that might knock you off the wagon again. The consequence of this perception disconnect is that you think watching your little apple dumpling “explore its surrounds” is cheek-pinching cute, but, here again, you’re out on a limb on this one. Knocking over every piece of breakable merchandise that’s fewer than 3 feet off the ground is not cute. Squealing loud enough to puncture my eardrum whenever you shove that stupid noise-making toy in its face (which you insist on doing every time you find yourself someplace the child would find boring (which of course is because the child is not supposed to be there)) is not cute. And toddling around a busy restaurant with hot plates and sharp knives is not cute (and it’s not even funny, this is just plain dangerous).

No one is impressed by your parenting. I think this is the issue that really gets us to the crux of your pathology. I always see the parents with the worst behaved children making the biggest show of what great parents they are. But this only exacerbates the underlying problem which is that you pay more attention to appearances and to other people than to your own child. You shower your child with excessive praise whenever it poops its pants; or you try to engage in calm, rational pro-con analysis when the little monster has hoisted a glass jar of tomato sauce over its head with a terrifying gleam in its eye. These would be perfect “teachable” moments for you to step in and be a parent rather than a two-bit child psychologist. How would a good parent have handled this situation? “Madison! [it’s always Madison] You put that down or I will slap you into next Tuesday!” No fuss, no muss. And there’s no need to worry about onlookers calling child welfare on you. With so many kids with stupid names being raised by so many parents with a penchant for giving their kids stupid names, they’ll never be able to track you down.

Lest anyone think that I have just been drinking too much haterade (shout out to “red” for that one), I’ll end on a positive note by talking about kids I can stand slash find mildly amusing. There are of course kids whose parents made them dress up like adults out of a need for some sort demented Gypsy Rose Lee kind of vicarious fulfillment. I also heart the kids who are a little too honest about their parents’ private business to strangers; like those Chewy granola bar commercials where the kid is at a wedding and goes, “My mom says she can't believe you wore white." It’s not that this latter category is particularly well behaved; I just think they offer a deliciously ironic sort of revenge for the sloppy upbringing of which the general public usually bears the brunt. Now if only every parent would shove a granola bar in their kid’s mouth when they started acting up, the world would be a happier place.

The Ants Go Marching Two-by-Two...and I Put a Quick End to That!

I know for a fact that the story of Noah and the Ark is bunk. I know because the Bible claims he boarded the animals onto his watercraft two-by-two. But ask anyone who has ever slogged through the crowded streets of New York and they will tell you that pair-wise foot travel is the most rage-inducingly inefficient way to do anything.

When I first noticed myself getting angered by this (which, coincidentally, was also the first time I encountered this), I was concerned that my gag reflex might just be a little too sensitive. I said to myself, “maybe you’re just a sourpuss and no one else really cares.” Perhaps, I thought, this was really a displaced reaction to those tacky paparazzi photos where you see a B-list celebrity couple try to ugly themselves up when they walk out of the house and hold hands walking through the parking lot of the Gulp ‘N Blow so that everyone knows that 1) they’re in a relationship with someone who is so pretty that any effort to uglify him or herself is just futile, 2) money can’t buy taste, and 3) they have a total disdain for the American public.

I think the real answer is jealousy. I’m jealous that these gimpy slackers have the luxury of ambling along the sidewalk shoulder to shoulder in the middle of the day clutching shopping bags and furry dogs that would have been eaten already if we lived in another time and place. Where are these folks going? Or, the better question would be, where are they not going? Don’t they have jobs? Don’t they have somewhere to be (besides right in my way)? There is absolutely nothing to stop and smell in New York that won’t give you cancer so I cannot fathom why people refuse to move it along when they’re out in public.

To add insult to injury, these are the same individuals who will be talking on their cell phones recounting every tedious detail of their miserable failure of a social life. Judging from the way they zigzag across the entire width of the public commons, they’re still feeling the effects of last night’s strike-out fest, and I in turn am feeling the emotional effects of communism writ small. I pay through the nose in taxes (well not “I”, but like, the “royal I”) in order to not have to walk in traffic. In hogging the sidewalk, our useless, dog-toting, social lepers have taken a part of my soul, but more importantly a part of my money, and that would be enough to make anyone angry.

Clogging up a crowded place involves a form of self-absorbed obliviousness that I think society should not tolerate. Apropos of our chewing discussion, the most obvious contraption to combat such a problem would be a cow-catcher. A blunt instrument to be sure, but if you are one of the perpetrators of this offense you have shown yourself to be impervious to all of the more subtle social cues in your surroundings. And I can assure you that a light but forceful love-tap from a half-ton locomotive attachment will not be nearly as unpleasant as the world of pain it would prevent me from unleashing on your jobless ass.

Mastication in Public

A little something to chew on as you consider whether we have evolved or devolved from our chimpanzee ancestors: why do people gnaw on food with their mouths agape like some sort of inbred mongrel? Setting aside the question of people who have colds (who should be 1) eating soup anyway or 2) not in public), this is among the most disgusting displays of which the human body is capable. And you don’t even have to take my word for it. There is an airline affinity group that is simply agog over this epidemic: http://www.airliners.net/discussions/non_aviation/read.main/1824645/ . And just so that this powerful irony is not lost on anyone, these are people who like airlines and are still so disgusted when someone is chewing his (excuse me, his or her) cud within earshot that it gets their tea kettles rattling. I myself am so apoplectic about this problem that I’m having trouble getting through in a compelling way.

Let’s try this. Let’s take the often used cud-chewing metaphor. I’m speaking now to the perpetrators of this crime against human decency.

This is how people perceive you:

So your presence conjures up images of a barnyard animal that eats grass, regurgitates it, swallows it again, lather, rinse, repeat. But I see no reason why this should deter you since everyone around you is probably already regurgitating anyway thanks to the quick work you made of that week-old banana.

Now, coming back to those members of society who’ve learned to walk upright, create fire, and keep our digestive processes entirely inside our corpuses, I do think there’s hope for the future. I think we have to believe that we are the change we know we can be. When the cynics tell us we’re naïve to think that we can live in a world where we believe in the power of our own sense of self-satisfaction, I say we turn the page to a new chapter in our civilization.

And so, here is my modest proposal. First, we must model the behavior we expect to see in others. I myself have been tempted to crunch on a big bundle of celery sticks one at a time, tongue wagging, food bits falling out of the largest hole in my head, just to make the point to these mouth-breathers how displeasing their behavior is to others. However in this situation, two wrongs don’t make a right, but they do make me want to jab myself in the temples with a fork. So for the love of creamed corn, do not solve the world’s problems by demonstrating its worst qualities.

Not to worry, though, I would not leave you without recourse. Nothing is more satisfying or efficient than violent self help. To that end, I propose a proactive measure. You know, I heard once (and I really should try to attribute it because it’s so true) that it takes 247 muscles in your face to frown but only 5 muscles to reach out your hand and bitchslap someone across the face. An alternative for you pacifist Code Pinkers out there would be to go to the offender’s office or place of business and shout obscenities at them while wearing the Keds you tried to dye with Pepto-Bismol in your sink last night. This also, is an effective approach.

Finally, don’t under-estimate the twin Judeo-Catholic powers of guilt and shaming. It might go something like this, “We spent all that money sending you to fancy college so you could sit in the basement smoking pot with your friends all day?!? And chew with your mouth closed!” It might also be along the lines of, “I blame myself for not raising you with manners or respect for others. I am sorry to have failed you, and everyone in the world that now has to put up with you, so miserably.”