Co-worker to me: "I saw David Byrne on the subway last week."
Me: "Oh yeah?"
Co-worker: "Yeah. He had gray hair, but he looks the same. He was looking at the posters in the subway doing that thing with his head. " [co-worker demonstrates looking in different directions in bird-like motions]
Me: "Wow."
Co-worker: "Yeah. I thought I'd do that arm thing (demonstrates down-the-arm-chopping action that accompany the lyrics "same as it ever was") but I thought that'd irk him."
Me: "It probably might."
****
Today, A and I woke up at 4 a.m. to head out to the boathouse for early morning rowing. No power saw weirdness was seen anywhere near our Columbia University stop.
****
I returned home (okay, I have to pre-empt this story to the bloggy audience and explicitly state that we live in the outer boroughs) to land myself in another LaMai Goes Vigilante Situation.
I was walking across a tiny laundromat and Montessori school when I heard a blood-churdling scream. Judging by the high-pitched sound of the scream, I thought it was a) a woman at the laundromat, or b) a child at the school. A woman ran out of the laundromat and a tall man ran out behind her. "Whassa mattah? Huh?" He was yelling to her. She was crying, visibly upset. As was expected, passersby continued walking up and down the sidewalk as though nothing happened. The woman was Mexican, and I spoke to her in Spanish. The man who was casually saying, "Hey, what happened?" had just kissed and fondled her, and forcibly tried to get her to do things in the tiny laundromat when no one was looking. The man walked away as I began asking her for information between her hysterics and tears. I opened my cellphone. He walked away faster. I called the woman's manager at the laundromat and asked the manager to come immediately. The manager agreed, and arrived within minutes.
I am getting sick of this &^%$t.
I mean, seriously.
I was mugged not once, but twice, in Miami. I was pro-active and stopped the thievery from happening (this must be in the archives here somewhere, I won't recount the insanity of what I did right now). But I cannot save all of New York. Unless someone hands me a Wonder Woman suit and subsidizes my do-good actions.
I want to live somewhere cosmopolitan but less ridiculous.
*****
From an article regarding the power saw incident:
Steinberg said no one in the subway station attempted to help him. "That's what upsets me more than anything else," he told The News.
*****
Anyway, I have hired a private school counsultant. Don't ask.
5 comments:
I'm not asking but between that and the rest of your day, my eyebrows are so high up they're under my hairline.
I'm wishing you a peaceful weekend...
When I read about the power saw thing, I thought about the painter character in Woody Allen's Hannah and her Three Sisters. He's watching a movie like The Sorrow and the Pity or something (one of the famous Nazi movies) and his girlfriend (played by Barbara Hershey) remarks that it's so incredible that something like the Holocaust could have happened, and he (I forgot who plays him, a great actor who was in Bergman movies) says what shocks him is that things like the Holocaust don't happen every day. (not that they don't) (see Rwanda; etc)
But anyway, with all the tension and insecurity and insanity, things in NYC generally seem much more peaceful to me than one might expect.
The sexual accosting thing is horrible, but it happens everywhere -- in every town and city and on college campuses, too. I don't think of it as a NYC thing.
What surprises me most of all is to hear that you live in an outerboro! At some point I deduced incorrectly that you lived in Chelsea. I assume you moved!
As for David Byrne, I used to see him lots of days at the Bleecker Street Playground when I was practically in residence there with my son during the 90's. He has a daughter whom he'd hang out.
Other Bleecker Playground sitings:
-James Gandolfini
-Sandra Bernhard
-Julian Schnabel's twins and their dual nannies (never a parent with those boys)
Well, O.K., won't ask about consultant, but I will wonder... Hope your early morning on the water was peaceful.--Jama
Roo & I were just talking about how Vancouver is getting so big & certainly more violent but still is so friendly. People call out 'thank you' to bus drivers. Roo takes the skytrain (light rapid rail) to work & every once in a while, someone faints and immediately people rush to help & dig out juice boxes from their lunch bags to offer. (in fact, almost 12 years ago, I, pregnant with A., fainted on the train & got that same response. After that I wouldn't get on the train unless I could get a seat & on one occasion I got on and started to back out, seeing no seats, but right away another standing guy bellowed out 'yo, lady needs a seat!' and a bunch of people offered.....I think someone would have anyway but I was in no hurry & this offering of seats to women is touchy as some women get awfully offended....)
Anyway, what we think is that the only way to fight this is by just doing what you're doing - by being the person to be polite, to take notice, to get involved. The more people do it, the more it ripples out.
Am I allowed to ask: "What's a private school consultant?"
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