The Wisdom of the East
“We need to do more than go after the low-hanging fruit and if we go hunting for bear and come home with rabbits we’re going to starve.”
I really wish the previous sentence was a figment of my imagination. Unfortunately, it was not. Words like these, my friends, are the kinds of things one hears at media sales conferences. You know why Dilbert is such a money making machine? Because for many of us, Dilbert is a documentary, not a work of fiction.
However one doesn’t have to attend a business function to hear silliness. I was on the airplane coming home and seated on an aisle with an Asian woman in her late 20s or 30s occupying the window seat with (thankfully) nobody in the middle. Without any prompting from me she said “Something isn’t right. You know that feeling when something isn’t right? You get an itch in your third eye and you know something isn’t right.”
Now I only had time for one beer before boarding the plane so I was relatively certain I didn’t hallucinate that sentence. I just looked at her blankly and said “What?” but she had begun rummaging through her carry-on bag. After a few minutes of digging she found what she was looking for: a pearl necklace in a box. She took it and began stroking the pearls and mumbling. I took this opportunity to close my eyes. She didn’t bother me again until the end of the flight when, as we were taxiing to the gate she exclaimed “Excuse me, I have to go to the bathroom, I’m going to be sick!” I jumped into the aisle whereupon a waitress-in-the-sky started to scold me and I said “She’s going to be sick” and they said “Oh”. Little Miss Third-Eye spent the rest of the ride in the bathroom and then came out and explained that she became ill because the woman in front of her started changing her baby’s diaper on the tray table when they landed.
Only problem was, nobody else noticed this. There was a woman and a baby, but I didn’t see anything and I certainly didn’t smell anything like LMTE did. She said to the flight attendants “You know it was the smell that got me because of course you don’t mind the smell of your own and if I had a kid I guess the smell of the kid wouldn’t bother me either but it was someone else’s kid.” This somehow became a segue into the story behind the pearl necklace which was that she had bought the pearl necklace in Jerusalem at a stand selling holy objects and it was obviously real to her because she had dealt with pearls in the past. Fortunately (or unfortunately) the row in front of me emptied out before I could hear any more.
As though that bit of wackiness wasn’t enough, at the cab stand I was picked up by a Japanese gentleman who was 80 if he was a day and fairly hard of hearing. I knew this because I tossed my bag into the van, sat down, and realized as he was pulling away that his back gate was open.
“Your gate is open” I yelled over the whoosh of the wind.
“Back gate open” flashed the warning message on the dashboard.
Well, this guy was having none of it. He zoomed right out of the airport and down toward the turnpike with the back gate gaping and cars beeping to get his attention to no avail. I shrugged, put on my seatbelt and held on to my luggage. At least the van was cool thanks to the good air circulation. On my way home I was treated to a virtuoso display of aggressive cab driving. I mean this guy was a master, cutting off people left and right and shaving minutes off our drive in the process. We got to the SI Expressway and a honking jeep finally got his attention. He snapped out of “the zone”, stopped the car IN THE LEFT LANE and as a Lexus skidded to a halt behind us he calmly pressed a button on the dashboard that closed the gate. He then swerved right and cut off another car just to pull alongside the jeep that drew his attention to the gate issue and give a friendly smile and wave. The rest of the way he kept cutting in and out of the entrance lanes to the Expressway and, much to my joy, usually cutting off the people who had just cut into the flow of traffic after staying the entrance lanes for as long as possible. I was briefly transported back to my time in cabs in Campania last summer. He was that good.
We finally came to my block and he asked me “What part of Staten Island is this?” I told him and he said “I’m looking for a house out here.” I nodded and said “Good time to buy.” We pulled up near my house and he noticed that a house across the street from mine had a for-sale sign up and he said “I’ll write down that number!” and pulled right into their driveway. I said “Uh, they may not appreciate you parking your cab in the driveway to do this; you might just want to pull up in front.” He said “ohhhhhhh” and complied. As I walked across the street into my house I saw him writing down the phone number on the sign and wondered if I would soon have a new neighbor. And if I do, I sure as hell am not pulling my car out of the driveway if I see him getting into his car.
It really is the little unexpected details that make life interesting, isn’t it gang?
I really wish the previous sentence was a figment of my imagination. Unfortunately, it was not. Words like these, my friends, are the kinds of things one hears at media sales conferences. You know why Dilbert is such a money making machine? Because for many of us, Dilbert is a documentary, not a work of fiction.
However one doesn’t have to attend a business function to hear silliness. I was on the airplane coming home and seated on an aisle with an Asian woman in her late 20s or 30s occupying the window seat with (thankfully) nobody in the middle. Without any prompting from me she said “Something isn’t right. You know that feeling when something isn’t right? You get an itch in your third eye and you know something isn’t right.”
Now I only had time for one beer before boarding the plane so I was relatively certain I didn’t hallucinate that sentence. I just looked at her blankly and said “What?” but she had begun rummaging through her carry-on bag. After a few minutes of digging she found what she was looking for: a pearl necklace in a box. She took it and began stroking the pearls and mumbling. I took this opportunity to close my eyes. She didn’t bother me again until the end of the flight when, as we were taxiing to the gate she exclaimed “Excuse me, I have to go to the bathroom, I’m going to be sick!” I jumped into the aisle whereupon a waitress-in-the-sky started to scold me and I said “She’s going to be sick” and they said “Oh”. Little Miss Third-Eye spent the rest of the ride in the bathroom and then came out and explained that she became ill because the woman in front of her started changing her baby’s diaper on the tray table when they landed.
Only problem was, nobody else noticed this. There was a woman and a baby, but I didn’t see anything and I certainly didn’t smell anything like LMTE did. She said to the flight attendants “You know it was the smell that got me because of course you don’t mind the smell of your own and if I had a kid I guess the smell of the kid wouldn’t bother me either but it was someone else’s kid.” This somehow became a segue into the story behind the pearl necklace which was that she had bought the pearl necklace in Jerusalem at a stand selling holy objects and it was obviously real to her because she had dealt with pearls in the past. Fortunately (or unfortunately) the row in front of me emptied out before I could hear any more.
As though that bit of wackiness wasn’t enough, at the cab stand I was picked up by a Japanese gentleman who was 80 if he was a day and fairly hard of hearing. I knew this because I tossed my bag into the van, sat down, and realized as he was pulling away that his back gate was open.
“Your gate is open” I yelled over the whoosh of the wind.
“Back gate open” flashed the warning message on the dashboard.
Well, this guy was having none of it. He zoomed right out of the airport and down toward the turnpike with the back gate gaping and cars beeping to get his attention to no avail. I shrugged, put on my seatbelt and held on to my luggage. At least the van was cool thanks to the good air circulation. On my way home I was treated to a virtuoso display of aggressive cab driving. I mean this guy was a master, cutting off people left and right and shaving minutes off our drive in the process. We got to the SI Expressway and a honking jeep finally got his attention. He snapped out of “the zone”, stopped the car IN THE LEFT LANE and as a Lexus skidded to a halt behind us he calmly pressed a button on the dashboard that closed the gate. He then swerved right and cut off another car just to pull alongside the jeep that drew his attention to the gate issue and give a friendly smile and wave. The rest of the way he kept cutting in and out of the entrance lanes to the Expressway and, much to my joy, usually cutting off the people who had just cut into the flow of traffic after staying the entrance lanes for as long as possible. I was briefly transported back to my time in cabs in Campania last summer. He was that good.
We finally came to my block and he asked me “What part of Staten Island is this?” I told him and he said “I’m looking for a house out here.” I nodded and said “Good time to buy.” We pulled up near my house and he noticed that a house across the street from mine had a for-sale sign up and he said “I’ll write down that number!” and pulled right into their driveway. I said “Uh, they may not appreciate you parking your cab in the driveway to do this; you might just want to pull up in front.” He said “ohhhhhhh” and complied. As I walked across the street into my house I saw him writing down the phone number on the sign and wondered if I would soon have a new neighbor. And if I do, I sure as hell am not pulling my car out of the driveway if I see him getting into his car.
It really is the little unexpected details that make life interesting, isn’t it gang?
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