Entries

Nineteen

Now, I’m guessing that my general audience resides somewhere between thirty and forty years old (feel free to contact me if I’m wrong - in fact, please do, I’m curious) and if you’re going to take up smoking, you’ve probably already done it. But just in case you are more in the nineteen year old category, listen up: I overheard these guys in the park the other day.

Listen

Were they old men playing chess? Noooo. They were nineteen year old boys, and their smoker’s coughs were worse than my sixty year old mother’s, and she’s been smoking since BEFORE I WAS BORN. Don’t smoke, kids. Seriously.

Yesterday, Paul was working on a report about how Legos are made. He was summarizing a very detailed account of the process.

Paul The pellets are fed in…um…The pellets…

Sage C’mon, you know where they go. Focus.

Paul The pellets are fed to…the LIONS!

This is what living in Canada is like: all the crosswalks have two big yellow lights strung above them. When you want to cross, you press the button, the two yellow lights begin to blink, and then you’re meant to point your finger out in front of you to indicate that you’re about to step out into the road. Not that anyone ever does but me, and I only do because my mom was visiting and she followed the directions on the sign and the cars all immediately stopped instead of the sort of cross-the-Champs-Elysées to get to the Arc de Triomphe video gameness that Canadian crosswalks are without the pointy finger.

So yesterday Paul and I came to a crosswalk, we pointed, and the minivan to our left stopped instantly, but the seventies muscle car on our right sped right up to the crosswalk line, then SCREECHED to a halt and the longhaired, scowling teenage boy driving it leaned out of the open window, music blasting, and called, “Sorry!” in a sincere and contrite way, and it was so unexpected that I was kind of embarrassed by his wildly out of character behavior and crossed the remainder of the street with my pointy finger held in front of me, looking down at my feet.

And while we’re on the subject, pressing seventy six percent of the walk buttons in New York City is as useful as shouting WALK! at the traffic lights. They haven’t worked since the Seventies. Pressing them twice does not help. (And yet, do I press the walk button at the stoplight near my apartment building? Yes. Yes, I do. Do I press it three times? Yes. Yes, I do.)

This is also true of the Close Doors elevator button in my apartment building. I’ve watched. It takes exactly the same amount of time for the elevator doors to close with the button as it does without. But the residents - the impatient young men, the harried mothers, but especially the elderly men, who will lean on the button until the doors close - show a touching faith in archaic, outdated technology that’s as likely to make a tinkly little fairy appear and grant you three wishes as it is to affect the elevator doors.

Double Double

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