[ Post a Response | Razor and Brush ]
Posted by Zach
on November 5, 2009, 5:27 pm
There's a 10,000 character limit on this forum, I don't want to post it any other place, so I am breaking this up.
Let me preface this story with a couple of items that need to be known.
I am a New Yorker.
I have seen many things and nothing surprises me.
New Yorkers take everything in stride, it takes a lot to shock us.
I have seen with my own eyes planes crash into skyscrapers and people leaping from tall buildings to certain death. I have seen people begging for money on the streets that are paved with gold; I have been shot at, spent hours underground in a dark, stranded subway car; I walked 12 miles in the sweltering August heat when the power failed in 2003, to get to Jamaica from midtown. And though I know that WE are the targets of many plots of mass destruction, I kiss my kids goodbye in the morning and take the train to work in Times Square, every day, where likely maps of my building are being looked at by malevolent eyes, and I don't think about it.
I am a New Yorker.
I work with people that come here from all over the country, and some, like me, from all over the world.
One thing brings us here, some call it 'to succeed', my father called it 'a better life'.
But it's the same thing in the end, only the motivation to begin is different.
What differentiates the people that come here from the people that stay there is drive, desire, and competition.
This makes New York a very tough, competitive place to live and to work, and raise a family, because of the fabric that has created it.
Just like (as I would imagine having never been there) people who live in the southwest want very much NOT to be here, and that fabric is altogether much more different.
Try as I might, I often at times (more often than not, actually) find myself unhappy.
Unhappy with the world my kids are exposed to, unhappy with the lack of time and attention that I have for them, and, most of all, unhappy whenever being a New Yorker intrudes on my being happy, and my children suffering as a direct result. Yes, you say, choose to be happy, you have much to be happy for. But, it's not my xapakthpa, or 'character' or even my nature. God damn Laconic DNA.
So this morning after I drop Emmy off at school to the front door, kiss her on the top of her head, hand her the backpack and wave goodbye, I turn on my blackberry, which I make a point of never looking at until Emmy is off; I turn it on, I walk to the car, and I drive the 2 miles to the train station, where I leave the car, and take the train into the city. By the time I get there the blackberry has powered up, and my mail has synched, and after I park I have 10 minutes or so where I sit there, before the train pulls in, and I read my mail.
This morning I got very angry, as I seem to be getting more and more often, more and more easily.
Long story short someone who wants something did what I have asked everyone clearly NOT to do, which is to drag a client into an internal email thread, and the big client at the big bank didn't need to see this b###hfest at 4AM and I didn't need to be asked 3 times for same thing, all before 7AM with some artificially created urgency even before I got out of the shower. So I was annoyed. My only reply to the demands were to reply all, take the client out of the thread, and say "Can we moving forward, again, NOT include our clients on any of these internal threads!" Without saying yes or no to the request, because I was angry. Looking back I was dragged into their frenzied mud, all dirty now, and more angry still.
I got to Penn Station, and I take the stairs that lead up to 34th street and 7th ave, on the southwest side of 34th and 7th. It's about 5 flights of stairs but there's an escalator you can take, it's 30 second ride, but when people follow protocol and stand on the right so people can pass them on their left walking up the steps of the escalator, it's 5 seconds. OR so it seems. So today I'm bouncing up the stairs, not because I have bounce but because I need bounce, because I have to deal with something. And I am angry, because this type of frenzy happens all too often. And, because I'm kind of tired of this NYC thing. I have been doing it for over 20 years, and it wears on you. There's only so much demand and ungrateful and time sensitive crap you can take, especially, ESPECIALLY, when that's what's on your mind when you're at the park and your kids are at play. These thoughts were in my head as I bounced up the escalator. And when I got to the top, I saw him.
There he was at the top of the escalator and the stairs, 2 banks of each, where the throng empty out onto 34th street and then go their separate ways, scurrying up 7th or darting towards 6th, all with a lot of energy, just like I have, and not because they want to but because they have to, this is energy NOT well spent, this is the 'you're in my way' kind of energy. But among all of the insects that I am one of, there he stood, facing us, with a smile on his face, with a twinkle in his eyes, and with both hands waving; he stood in the center and back as far as possible so as not to get in our way, and we all darted around him, but there he remained, his smile completely unfazed by the unflappable New Yorker that's seen it all, they see this too and largely ignore it. But that did not dissuade him in any way, he did what he was supposed to do, he stood his ground and he looked at all of us as we emerged, kindly and animated, lightheartedly waving and not speaking. Who?
Why Santa Claus, that's who.
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