As such, I'm a pretty
laid back lad. Easy goes it. Take it as it may come. On the whole, even downright friendly. That's my lease on life.
So when I took a trip
eastward to the tri-state area of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, it was
a totally different world, baby.
I'm not gonna say that
everybody was overtly rude, exactly.
Just way more direct than I was accustomed to. Yeah.
We'll go with that.
For example, consider
this exchange at the fast food joint drive-thru:
Me: "Hey. How ya doin'?"
Disembodied Voice:
"Wut do ya want?"
Okay. Small talk
summarily dismissed and dispensed with.
On another occasion I
found myself at a dead stop and sandwiched in between two cars on a one-way New
York City side street. We are all
immobilized in a traffic jam for which there is no apparent explanation. And this guy behind me actually starts honking
his horn! I turned around in my
driver's seat and looked out the back window to insure that he could see that I
was laughing at him. He took a break
from leaning on his horn to flash me the customary Big Apple extended finger
"term of endearment". I
continued to smile. He resumed his
honking.
My cousin, a veteran
resident of the region and long-since desensitized to indigenous behavior, was
given his newspaper from a parking lot valet who had taken it from his vehicle
to peruse during his down time.
"Here's your 'Times'", he said. As we got in the car, I asked Mark if he was miffed that the dude
just helped himself to his periodical out of the front seat. He said, "I just let stuff like that
go. Ya gotta. I've learned. At least he
gave it back. And nobody got
mugged."
Seemed like small
concessions for which to be grateful to me.
However, this is the frame of reference of a fellow who has lived his
life at least 2000 miles away from these states of, ahem, "selective manners"
in which I was immersed at the time.
Perhaps the most truly
awe-inspiring moment of my stranger in a strange land experience came to pass
at Times Square during rush hour.
Almost precisely at 5 o'clock quitting time on the nose, as I was
casually window shopping outside the plethora of merchandisers which populate
the famed (or, depending upon the hour, infamous) sector of The City,
all of the sudden it happened. In an
alarming flash, manageable foot traffic exploded into an avalanche of humanity.
And the mushrooming horde all seemed to
be marching steadily toward me.
Was I intimidated? Hell yeah. Shock waves of high anxiety coursed through
me. But soon something would make
itself progressively apparent. Hey,
this is all relatively orderly and systematic.
What was completely alien to me was merely business as usual for those
who do this as a matter of routine, and without so much as a flinch, Monday
straight on through Friday. I walked
away, emotionally a trifle shaken, but bodily, and miraculously, intact.
