Category Archives: living in new york sucks so hard

The Time That All the Bad Things Happened in One Single Night

Posted by katie ett on January 18, 2012 – 12:00 pm
Filed under living in new york sucks so hard
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Kamran was already mad at me. The night before, I had been exhausted from walking around Brooklyn with a visiting friend all day, and his good mood was really pinching my nerves, so I’d laughed when he’d stubbed his toe on my suitcase, which was still sitting in the middle of his floor since coming back from Ohio, and I’d said, “THAT should bring your mood down a little!” It was a joke, but he hadn’t liked it. But I’d thought it was funny and refused to apologize.

There was also the problem of the fly that had inexplicably shown up in his apartment days before and was insisting on landing on our heads while we ate. (And everyone knows flies poop every time they land.) A fly swatter was in order.

So we walked up the street the six blocks to the hardware store, which wouldn’t have been a problem had my feet not still been burning from all of the walking I’d done that weekend. So in addition to being mad at me, Kamran was also having to walk ve-e-e-e-ery slowly so I could keep up with him. Except that he was impatient to get to the hardware store (and then the grocery store and the Middle Eastern place where he wanted to get dinner), so he kept walking ahead of me and then stopping and waiting, which was making me anxious, which was making me try to walk faster, which was making my feet hurt more.

We got to the hardware store, and he hastily asked the guy at the counter where the fly swatters were without saying thank you, and then he hastily asked a second employee for the same directions without saying thank you, and then he grabbed a fly swatter and handed it to me to bring to the counter, all of which is very unlike him. So now I was in a bad mood, too.

And it was then that Kamran realized he’d forgotten his wallet. And I never bring my wallet to the grocery store, because he never lets me pay, anyway, so we had the guy hold our precious fly swatter at the cash register while we went back to Kamran’s.

And it was then that Kamran realized he’d forgotten his keys. And I thought it was soooooo ironic, because I’m always pushing him out the door whenever we go anywhere, and he’s always complaining that I don’t give him time to get his wallet and keys, but I’d specifically hung back that night in order to not add insult to injury in light of the whole stubbed-toe situation.

So we walked/hobbled back to his building in the cold and asked the doorman for the spare key. It didn’t work. We went back downstairs and asked if there was another one. There wasn’t. We wiggled and jiggled the crap out of that thing. We tried popping the lock with the keyring. We tried being rough with it and then gentle with it. It didn’t work.

In my infinite wisdom, I asked the doorman if there’s any specific locksmith the building uses, and he took it upon himself to call one for us. I didn’t ask him about the cost, because of course he was going to call the cheapest and best locksmith for us, right? We sat in the lobby in silence for ten minutes until the guy showed up, and he replaced the lock in five minutes.

For $360.

Payable in cash.

Immediately.

He’d walk to the ATM with us.

And then we had to walk/hobble back to the hardware store and grocery store after that still. And then Kamran asked me to finally take my suitcase back to my apartment, but it had lost a wheel when my cabbie yanked it from his trunk and got it caught on something, so it was lopsided and scraped the floor wherever I moved it, and I knew it was going to be the biggest pain to get back to Brooklyn, so I cried for two hours.

So it was basically the worst night in KamKat history. But we came out of it not being mad at each other somehow, so there’s that.

Blame the Bus Driver

Posted by katie ett on December 7, 2011 – 12:00 pm
Filed under funner times on the bus, living in new york sucks so hard
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I was going to start a new series today about beautiful things I see from my bus window on my way to and from work. Taking the subway shaves as much as twenty minutes off of my commute time, but riding the bus is an opportunity for me to see every neighborhood from Murray Hill to Battery Park each morning and afternoon.

I was going to tell you about the little boy on my bus who pointed to the St. Vartan Armenian Cathedral and said, “Taj Mahal!” and whose mother tried to tell him where Armenia was and that moment when she realized she had no idea. Or the very tallest guy walking the very smallest and fluffiest puppy. Or the girl in the camel hair skirt with the matching cape.

But instead I’ll tell you yet another story to illustrate how New Yorkers are absolutely the most detestable people in the world.

Read the rest here! (I know I’m annoying, but I get paid per click, so I have to make you go over there to read the story.)

Caught in the Train Doors

Posted by katie ett on December 1, 2011 – 12:00 pm
Filed under fun times on the subway, living in new york sucks so hard
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This morning, a polite young man let me into a packed R train first, even though there was a chance he wasn’t going to fit in after me. I flattened myself as much as I could to allow him in, too, and as he tried to squeeze between the doors at the last minute, the sleeve of his leather jacket got caught. I stared at the fabric, pressed into the crack between the doors so tightly he couldn’t pull it out, and remembered a time when the same thing happened to me.

I was wearing a plaid cape and flew into the 4 train, superhero style, in the last seconds before the doors closed. One side of the cape got caught in the doors, and in the moments before I knew the train would begin to move, I had all of these terrifying daymares about what might happen as we moved through the tunnel:

Read the rest here!

Bus Stop Line Jump

Posted by katie ett on November 10, 2011 – 12:00 pm
Filed under funner times on the bus, living in new york sucks so hard, my uber-confrontational personality, why i'm better than everyone else
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Kamran and I were in Hell’s Kitchen Sunday night, having traveled to the exact opposite side of the island to pour our months of collected pocket change in one of those machines that exchanges it for gift certificates. We were waiting at a bus stop with our riches in hand, staring longingly at the side-by-side 99-cent pizza and Gray’s Papaya, when a man approached with a large instrument in a case strapped to his back. We were standing just to the left of the bus shelter, leaving enough room for someone to slip past us in line if he wanted to be a jerk. But he stood behind us instead, avoiding the waist-high pile of garbage bags on our other side.

We stayed in that configuration until the bus arrived some minutes later, when the man with the instrument came out of nowhere to stand in front of me in the line of people waiting to get on the bus. I couldn’t even help myself when my blood took a sudden surge; I simply had to march around him and insert myself back into the line where I rightfully belonged. The fact that he had waited until the last second to make his move made me so much angrier than if he had just done it from the moment he came to the stop. At least then he could’ve pretended to be looking for a seat or a place to rest his instrument in the shelter.

Read the rest here!

Insulting Jerks the Classy Way

Posted by katie ett on November 2, 2011 – 12:00 pm
Filed under living in new york sucks so hard, my uber-confrontational personality
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Last Saturday, Kamran and I were out for a pleasant jaunt around the city to enjoy what seems like it may be one of the last days of nice weather. We were crossing 42nd Street on 5th Avenue in front of the Main Library when an aging compact car rounded the corner from the left and attempted to cut in front of us before we could slow him. We were perfectly within the limits of the crosswalk sign, of course, and continued ahead as such. This clearly displeased the driver, who kept not just inching toward us but, like, feeting toward us threateningly.

We were sipping bubble tea, and I had my camera slung ’round my neck, so maybe the guy thought we were a couple of podunk tourists, but this queen bee of the city doesn’t get messed with like that, so I bored a hole in the guy straight through his windshield and said, “Hey, F*** YOU!”

Because my mama, god rest her soul, raised me to be classy.

It took him a couple of seconds to recover from these words he most assuredly had never heard come out of the mouth of such a sweet-looking lady, but then he retorted, “Same to you!” while finishing his turn and continuing down the street. I felt fine about yelling at the dude, because you get your car out of my pedestrian city, a-hole, but I was a little upset that the first thing I resort to in times of crisis is cursing. (Not that you didn’t know that.)

I first decided I should’ve yelled, “Come at me, bro!”, but then I remembered that the guy was in a car and would’ve killed me had he come at me. I asked Kamran what I should have said instead, and he suggested, “I’m going to tell your mom on you when I see her later tonight.” Which are pretty strong words from someone who enacted a rule that I can only insult his mom once a day.

Well, luckily, my friend Sarah posted this on Facebook yesterday to help me out, from Tastefully Offensive:

So next time someone attempts to plow me with his car, I’m going to look him square in his beslubbering little elf-skinned eye and yell,

“THOU GLEEKING FAT-KIDNEYED WHEY-FACE!“