Just Another Day in the Life of a City Curmudgeon

Filed under good times at everyone else's expense, living in new york is neat, why i'm better than everyone else

Last night, Kim came over with Big Gay Renly Brownies™, and we finished this season of “Game of Thrones” (I fell in love with Khaleesi all over again), and then my roommate/landlord/co-worker/friend, Jack, and I watched the last three episodes of “Girls”, all of which were so entirely MY LIFE that I have no idea how everyone isn’t feeling the bignostalgicfeelings I’m feeling for this show. Hannah considers moving back home to Michigan for exactly one minute before realizing she needs to date boys whose buttholes she can stick her finger in, and those boys don’t exist in Michigan. She and her friends go to a Williamsburg warehouse party not because they want to but because it’s just what everyone’s doing. She calls herself a writer but is really an unemployed administrative assistant by anyone else’s standards. It is good.

This morning, I was waiting in line to go up the stairs from the subway platform when a woman in a way-too-classy-for-work silk blouse and pencil skirt clomped by me in some suede sandals with too-tall heels. Her feet had gotten sweaty from the heat, so she was sliding around in them and appeared to be having a really hard time walking, but that didn’t keep her from cutting in front of ten people in line to get upstairs first. I got on the escalator, still thinking about her sweaty feet, and watched as a shrimpy little man in a tight polo shirt tucked into pinstriped pants that showcased how tiny his waist and how ample his backside were ran up past me like his bowels were imploding. I heard him start saying, “Excuse me! Pardon me! STEP ASIDE!” to someone ahead of me and saw that the woman was standing still on the left side of the escalator. WHICH LITERALLY EVERYONE KNOWS is for people who wants to walk up instead of ride up. He said to her, “Do you not know how to use an escalator?”, and she said, “Shut up!” But you know she moved aside.

Then, going into my office building, a woman behind me got frustrated with my leisurely pace, decided she couldn’t wait for me to get through the revolving door, and opened up one of the side doors. I’m not sure why, but people not using the revolving door causes seething hatred to rise in me; I feel like these people are not just careless but, like, actually-bad people who torture kittens and send spam e-mails to grandmothers asking that $50,000 be sent to an offshore account to help rescue the king of Namibia from his captors or whatever. She rushed ahead of me and was already waiting in the elevator bank when I got there a minute later. We have one of those newfangled elevator panels where you type in your floor, and it tells you which elevator to get into. Only not all of the elevators are in the system yet, so it sometimes just tells you to wait for one of the unmarked elevators to come. Well, she had evidently been told that, because when I came up and typed in my floor number and was told to get into Elevator C, she watched and then huffed and puffed like the elevators had committed a personal offense against her. She then came over to re-enter her floor in an attempt to get on my elevator, but my elevator arrived just then, so as she approached with her arm already outstretched, I cut her off, and she apologized for the privilege.

I know that I’m a very small person, but I feel like everything’s coming up Katie.

10 Comments

  1. Noel says:

    You continue to make me feel like I would last all of 4 hours in NYC before I collapsed into a woeful heap of tears. I guess my simple life in Kentucky has just made me far too nice.

  2. “Hannah considers moving back home to Michigan for exactly one minute before realizing she needs to date boys whose buttholes she can stick her finger in…”

    I have GOT to start watching more TV.

  3. Jessica R. says:

    Everything about this reassures me that NYC is not somewhere I could live for any length of time, but I’m glad you’re taking joy in the degradation of those who deserve it. I mean it!

  4. bluzdude says:

    People that block the escalator deserve to get their coats caught in the teeth up at the top, and get sucked under.

    • Deb K says:

      I completely agree. Love the image of the woman trying to stay in her shoes. Serves her right.

  5. Kim says:

    Those GIRLS episodes descriptions are almost attractive to me. I would have stayed to watch but it was 10:16!

    I had a minor some-kind-of-attack yesterday morning after working 13 hours (again) on Friday night wherein I was questioning why I even live here. I still can’t really answer (except that I can’t imagine living anywhere else and being even a little happy), but I’m over it now, and I laugh with utter disdain every time someone standing on the left of the escalator has the audacity to be offended when someone tells him to move.

  6. Elliepie says:

    The stand left walk right thing was a revelation for me when I traveled to Europe oh so many moons ago. Southerners (and Oregonians, for that matter) do NOT get the concept. I want to punch them all in their fat bottoms.

  7. I’ll walk an extra mile to find some stairs if it means saving the embarrassment of my attempting to climb onto / off of an escalator. There’s just something about the timing… I can guarantee there will be an incident.

  8. Cassie says:

    This? Is fantastic. I feel the same way while driving and someone is bobbing and weaving and not getting anywhere, yet still is being an asshole. But then persistence pays off and you get further faster and the other dude gets stuck behind a semi truck. WIN!