Broken Filter

My home telephone number is an area code off from a local hospital.  Since the phone company randomly assigned this number to us more than 7 years ago this has bewildered everyone who calls us.  We get calls day and night for the hospital.  We are not the hospital.  We’ve never even been to that hospital.  

These phone calls became such a constant in our lives that our answering machine greeting notifies people that they have NOT reached the hospital and tells them the correct telephone number to call to reach the hospital.  This seemed like a genius plan.  It would have been, if people weren’t so dang stupid.  Once we did get a message from someone saying that they were trying to call the hospital and thanked us for telling her where to actually call.  Most people just either keep calling back or leave messages asking for room numbers, appointments and ambulettes. Occasionally if the message sounds desparate, like the time the elderly man tried to leave a message for his wife after her surgery, we’ll call back and give them the information.  Mostly though, this is an inconvenience.  We’ve thought of changing the phone number, or canceling the phone altogether.  But those steps seem too drastic and/or expensive.  So it’s a constant source of annoyance/amusement in our lives.

This evening is a good example.  As I was cleaning the phone began to ring.

Call #1:   I didn’t recognize the name on the caller ID, (let’s call it Natalie Katz) so I let it go to the machine.  Natalie did not leave a message.  

Call #2:  Natalie called back again.  Again the machine picked up.  Again no message.  Again she clearly did not listen to the greeting that said “if you are trying to reach ABC Hospital, it’s XXX-YYY-ZZZZ.”

Call #3:  Natalie called back immediately.  Again the machine picked up.  Once again, no message. Once again, no attention is paid to the detailed greeting giving the right number.

Call #4:  Natalie calls back yet again.  I am fed up. I answer the phone in a huff.  No one speaks.  At all.  I hang up.

Call #5:  I have really had it.  Natalie, apparently, has not.  She calls back.  I answer.  Me:  ”HELLO?”  Natalie:  ”Hi I’m trying to be connected to the nurse’s station.”  Me:  ”You have the wrong number.”  Natalie:  ”Well what number should I call”  Me:  ”I don’t know what number you should call. I don’t know who you are trying to call, but you have the wrong number.  This is my apartment.  I don’t have a nurse’s station.”  Natalie:  ”Oh.”  Click.

It appears that personal interaction was all she needed.  Natalie has not called back.  I’m certain she will never find the nurse’s station, but at least she won’t call me back.  I hope.  Some might say I should have told her the right number.  But after phone call #5 she used up my good will.  I have only so much tolerance in my life for those who are both stupid and obstinate.

I have been a bit silent lately, as the world in which I eavesdrop has been a bit boring of late.  Or perhaps I’ve been too distracted to take notice of the absurdities of daily living.  I guess you could say that the filter through which I ingest that which falls through the broken filters of others was….broken?

This evening after work I went to the gym and took a spinning class.  Usually after an evening gym session I’ll just grab my stuff, go home and shower there.  But the weather is getting colder.  I’m a sweater - not the cable knit kind, but the kind that perspires at the mere mention of exercise.  In particular, spinning is the kind of class which causes me to sweat like an eskimo in a parka at a hot yoga class in the Sahara.  So tonight after riding a stationary bike pretending I was Lance Armstrong going nowhere in a class full of women (and the occasional man who likes to look at women in spandex) I needed to shower before heading home.  

There were some young twenty-somethings also in the spinning class, three of whom also needed to shower.  As I took my shower I heard a conversation that went a little something like this:

Girl 1:  I love this product it’s amazing.  It makes my skin look so tan.

Girl 2:  Oh, can you bring it in for me? I’d love to get some.

Girl 3: Your skin is always so tan.

Girl 1:  I know, I use it all the time.  It’s kind of funny.  It’s to the point now where I’ve been with Joey for so long, but I feel like he still has no idea what my real skin color is.  I’ve just been so tan since I met him.

Girl 2: Oh my god, that’s crazy!

Girl 3: It is.  I wish I could tan like that.  I’m like so pale!  

Girl 2:  I know, you are really fair.

Girl 3:  You guys have never seen me with a tan, I should show you a picture from when I had a tan.

Girl 1:  You had a tan?!

Girl 3:  Yeah, I did after I came back from vacation.  You know what the weirdest thing is?  When I get tan, I’m still kind of pale, but my nipples get like black.

Girl 1 and 2:  What?

Girl 3:  Yeah, it’s so crazy, but like when I’m tan, even if the rest of me isn’t that dark, my nipples get so black. 

Girl 1:  That’s weird, I wonder why?

Girl 3:  I don’t know, I noticed the most after I used a tanning bed. I was going on vacation and I knew that I had to like get a base before I went because I would be so much closer to the sun for like a whole week.  So I went tanning to get a base.  I went for like a whole month and I still only looked just a little bit tan after the month. 

Girl 2:  Really?

Girl 3:  Yeah, I bought a package for a whole month and went all the time, which I didn’t really mind because I like tanning beds.

Girl 1:  I know, they’re like so warm and cozy.

Girl 3:  But even though the rest of me wasn’t that dark, my nipples were like black.

Girl 2: Weird.  Maybe it’s because the skin there is so much thinner.  And like they’re not normally in the sun.

Girl 1:  I bet you would only notice that if you used a tanning bed or if you went to a nude beach.

Girl 3:  It’s so weird because normally my nipples are so like light pink. I sometimes think that when that happens it’s the Italian in me coming out.  The Irish half of me is so like pale everywhere but the Italian side comes out when my nipples get black.

Girl 1:  That’s funny.

Girl 2:  Yeah, oh my god, that is sooo funny!

The conversation continued with a discussion of the half-breed’s Italian cousins and how they are so tan that they don’t even look related.

At one point as I was toweling off in the shower, I actually stood still, with my mouth hanging open, dumbfounded not only that this conversation was happening, but that it was screamed over sound of the running water of about 7 showers, in a locker room full of women of all sorts of nipple shades.

I don’t know what to say.  Except that I hope Girl 1’s boyfriend finds out that she is not naturally Snooki colored before he seals the deal.  And I hope Girl 3 stops tanning her areolae and their environs.

Recently while riding a subway uptown I was standing near a group of high school aged girls.  They were engaged in a “when I grow up” conversation about how many children they want.  One particular girl emphatically said that she only wants one child and it shall be a girl.

“I’m just gonna have one baby.  And it better be a girl.”

“I’m gonna have a girl. I’m only having one.  If it’s a boy I’m gonna make him gay.”

If children are our future then I’m scared for our future.

As I walked my dog around the neighborhood park this morning, in the calm before the latest Storm of the Century, I overheard a woman talking on her hands-free cell phone earpiece thing.  She was seated on a park bench wearing a black and red floral dress that is a just a couple of sizes away from being placed firmly in the mu-mu category.  She knows what’s been going on and she knows what it means. As she proselytized to whoever was on the other end I heard her say:

“There are witches out there.  They’ve been practicing witchcraft.  And it is sad.  You know that earthquake.  The day after the earthquake I realized something.  God is trying to tell us something.  He is tired.  He has had it with the homosexuality.  He has had it with the lesbianism.  Those people in Haiti better watch out.”

That is all I could hear before the dog continued on his hunt for more trees to water.  I didn’t really need to hear more.  I never knew that Haiti was such a hotbed of homosexual witchcraft.  I obviously have to catch up on my current events.

Last week, walking through the lobby and getting on the elevator I once again heard the security guards discussing worldly matters.

Female security guard: “Women can bond with each other and it’s not a sexual thing.” Male security guard: “it could be sexual, asexual, bisexual…”

Ding! There’s the elevator.

Boo. Why does it arrive so quickly when it’s juicy story time?

So with my lunch I was eating some watermelon and wanted to know the difference between the white and the black seeds.  I remember being told  as a kid that you shouldn’t eat the black ones but the white ones were softer and okay to eat.  I googled this to see if I was just being told racist old wives tales.   Some Physics website had a long thread about this issue. Jimmy Snyder had the funniest response.  Equally funny is the fact that someone actually thought his response merited further analysis.  People need to get over themselves.

Jimmy Snyder

Nov23-05, 10:56 AM

The danger in swallowing watermelon seeds is that the seed may take root in the stomach and grow another watermelon there. At first this might not seem so bad since it’s like eating an entire watermelon and not have to share it with anyone. However, when that thing starts to make its way down your small intestines, it will be like a watermelon making its way down your small intestines. Ouch. If I were you, I’d stick with grapes.

Ouabache

Nov23-05, 08:05 PM

The danger in swallowing watermelon seeds is that the seed may take root in the stomach and grow another watermelon there..:rofl: Funny guy.. The pH of the stomach (http://biology.clc.uc.edu/courses/bio104/atom-h2o.htm) alone, would inhibit growth of new plant tissue. The pH in your gut is between 1 - 3. Inside the intestines, it is not there long enough to germinate. Even if it did, it becomes crushed and flushed out before doing any damage. The seed’s best protection for survival, until it reaches a habitable medium, is its seed-coat.

Are you a man who has fantasized about the sexy antics that you’d see if you were a fly on the wall in a woman’s locker room at the gym?  Do you have an unrealistic vision of some soapy naked girl on girl action?  Well it’s time to take a cold shower in reality.

My locker room etiquette involves doing my best to keep to myself and not subjecting too many people to seeing more of me than necessary.  Those towels are small, but two of them will cover the necessities.  If I’m there with a friend I’ll chat, but I try to change quickly and keep my parts covered during these chats.

Not everyone is this modest.

Recently, while the president was in town for a ceremony at Ground Zero a woman stood by her locker discussing the impact of the presidential motorcade on traffic in the area.  She had this lengthy conversation in only a short t-shirt, full earth mama commando from the waist down, with one foot on the bench, Captain Morgan style.

I guess sometimes you gotta let it air dry?

Yesterday after work I took a spin class at the gym near my office.  After class,  having covered myself in a thousand tiny towels to walk over to the shower I quickly showered and went back to my locker to change.  A cardio class of some sort had just let out and I heard several women talk about how hot it was in the cardio room.  They are right, the air conditioning in that room is terrible and the mirrors fog up by the end of most classes.  So it goes without saying that a shower is a refreshing necessity afterwards.

Out of the shower walks a woman in her fifties.  She is bigger than you would imagine a gym enthusiast to be, and she probably doesn’t fit well in those tiny towels.  She was certainly relieved to have showered and contrasted how she feels now to when she was in the hot cardio room.

“This feels so good.  If I was home I could just lay down in the cold air conditioner.  Wet and naked.”

Awkward silence.

She continued this conversation with whoever would engage her while seated in sweatpants, her sagging topless glory slouching over her bulging waistband.

“You young’ens will understand when you hit menopause.  Ach, it’s the worst.  You think it’s bad in the summer now.  Wait till you get older and the hot flashes come.  There’s nothing like laying down in the air conditioning and being wet from a cold shower.”

Gentlemen, that is what would really happen if you realized your dream of putting a hidden camera in a women’s locker room.

Be careful what you wish for.

Coming of age in the Bronx, I always fancied myself better than my surroundings.  I felt smarter than many of those around me.  Smarter in the sense that I realized life was more than spending all your money on leather jackets, boots, CDs and gold jewelry that had both your name and your boyfriend’s name in diamonds.  Money should be saved for college, travel, etc.  I felt trapped in my hometown and thought I didn’t fit in.  I didn’t wear expensive clothes, my favorite hairstyle was a baseball cap, I loved to read and write bad poetry.  I was so different.  I didn’t even have a Bronx accent for pete’s sake!  Somehow my brother and I managed to survived being raised in the Bronx by two Bronx natives and only when really tired or really drunk do we start to tawk like New Yawkahs.  I didn’t know where I was headed, but I knew there had to be a better place.  I must have spent hours with my head on the back of the couch staring out the living room window desperate for that better place as I watched the guidos with the super gelled/moussed blowouts speed by in their sports cars blasting freestyle music.  I thought, I’m gonna make something of myself one day and these yahoos will be fixing their old sports cars and poofing their thinning hair.  

I was quite the opinionated self involved snob wasn’t I?

But the older I get, the more I realize that at our core we are all more alike than I used to think.  When it comes down to it everyone wants to be happy. For some happiness comes in the form of personalized doorknocker earrings or a vanity plate on the newest SUV. For others it’s in a comfy pair of sneakers or in the pages of a good novel.  But for nearly everyone, happiness comes from having people you love around you. 

So if the 17 year old me had been on the 4 train this evening she would have had a different perspective on the conversation I overheard on my way home from the gym.

A woman, about my age, perhaps a few years older (putting her in her mid to late 30’s) wearing a security guard uniform was talking to a younger woman - probably in her 20’s.  They began talking about Times Square.  The thirtysomething said that she doesn’t like Times Square.  ”It’s too bright and crowded.  You been there once and you’re good.  It’s good for tourists who wanna see the lights and take a picture with Mickey and Minnie.  I took my kids there though and they liked it.  They took their picture with Mickey and Minnie and the boys loved it.  But you don’t wanna go there too much.”

The conversation turned to kids.  The thirtysomething said she has five kids.  She started young.  But she finished school even while pregnant and with a young baby and went to college.  Now she has this security job.  You got to pay for the classes, but you gotta pay money to make money in this world.  Once you do they train you and you get a good job.  

The twentysomething has a kid too.  She had him very young also.  The thirtysomething says that she has four boys and a girl.  She’s a grandmother too.  Her daughter had a baby at 18.  ”I did all the right things, I tried to teach her from when she was young what was up.  But what are you gonna do?  I can’t be that mad, she was older than I was when I had her so that’s something.  She did better than me.”

That’s actually kind of a good perspective.  It’s all relative, and relative to her, her daughter is doing better than she did.  Really, what more can a parent ask for? 

This morning’s train ride to work was long and uneventful, with the small exception of the purse of the woman next to me resting on my arm for entirely too long.  Having spent the night in the Bronx visiting with my mom and nephew, I rode the 6 from practically the beginning all the way to the last stop.  I stayed on the local because I was seated in relative comfort on the end of the long benches, so that I only had one person (and her purse) next to me. I used my seated position and the train’s lack of loud & strange conversations to make some progress in my most recent book.  The actual train ride was odorless, aside from the pungent aroma of urine I encountered on the platform, which served as a reminder that the wet spots are not all from last night’s rain and inspired me not to place my bag on the ground.  But once on the train, I was seated, it was air conditioned, it did not smell of human excrement, and there were no unsightly our unsoundly distractions.  That was nice. 

But sometimes you miss the crazies and their conversations that make you realize they don’t have a full appreciation for the distinctions between public and private spaces.

Which is why it’s nice that I get to overhear the security guards in my building’s lobby as I wait for the elevator.

This morning, there was an older gentleman, I would place him in his late 40’s to mid 50’s, chatting with two female security guards, whom I would place in their mid 30’s.  The gentleman had some sort of official looking maroon polo shirt, but was not in full security guard gray pants and white “rent-a-cop” shirt. 

I walk past them, flash my ID, about which they appear uninterested, and press “up.”  In the very short period of time it takes the elevator to arrive, me to board, and the doors to close, I hear the gentleman explain that….

“There is a difference between sex and fucking.  If I’m having sex, making love to you, from the foreplay to the caressing and actually doing the deed and finishing… it’s gonna take some time.  I’m talking like at least three hours start to finish.  But if I’m just hitting it to hit it, that’s gonna be quick.”

I don’t know how this conversation started or how it ended, as the elevator whisked me away too soon.  But I like to think that if an elevator in our building ever goes out of service for three or more hours, I will ask no questions. 

I will also seriously consider taking the stairs.

Gentleman, when applying sunscreen to your ladies bikini clad abdomen, never say “oh it jiggles like jello!” Unless of course you thought your sex life needed a lengthy vacation.