An Open Letter (9)

To the Woman with the Crazy Sob Story,

Look, lady, I'm sure you're in a fix. Maybe your stepmother really did die this morning, and you really did just pick up your 3 and 11 year old siblings from a police precinct and they're now sitting in that gray Corrolla right there (that I can't see). Maybe you really do just need some help getting back to Irvington. Or out of Brooklyn. There have been moments when all I've wanted, myself, is to get out of Brookyln.

But if you want to be taken seriously, perhaps you should reconsider the plan of attack that goes: 1. wander up to random stanger on a Brooklyn street who is held captive because her car is wide open as boxes are being loaded out of it, 2. declare that you have an emergency situation, 3. plead for the chance to Google.

Let me say that again: "it's an emergency - do you have a way to Google?"

When you want a stranger to hand you cash on the street, just ask for it. Don't try to pretend that really all you want to do is use Google to look up you-don't-know-what (as you said yourself) and then rapidly launch into explaining how you have just enough gas to get your car to the gas station and you just need some help getting home to Irvington with your 3 and 11 year old siblings who are sitting right there in that invisible Corrolla.

Really. Try again, please. And if you could leave me out of it next time, that would be even better.

Elbow Room

I first realized it when I flew home for my cousin's wedding in October: I'd never before been so happy to find myself at Newark Airport. Then it happened again as my plane landed at Logan and I walked out into the terminal. For four days I've re-entered a world of car horns and obscenities, and I've never had such a distinct feeling of coming home.

As I stood on the T this morning simultaneously cursing the group of shouting teenagers in my car and feeling immensely grateful for their existence, I began to wonder about these stereotypes of Southerners as being nicer and Northeasterners as being not necessarily mean but unconcerned with the welfare of their fellow humans. Now that I live in the South I’m seeing how much truth there is to those supposed differences, but as a born and raised Northerner I always feel compelled to defend the detachment: that’s what feels right to me, and I’d like to think that doesn’t make me inherently less nice.

What occurred to me on the T is that there’s just a lot more physical space for people to spread out in the South, and in my favorite cities (New York and Boston) there are so many more people crammed into the available space. In Nashville my apartment isn’t flanked on all sides by neighbors, and it’s more than spitting distance from the building next door. When I go to the far side of town (which is much farther away than the far side of Boston), I get in my own car and have however many cubic feet of space (and sound and attempt at thermal regulation) all to myself. In Boston you’re constantly surrounded by people – roommates, upstairs and downstairs neighbors through thin ceilings and floors, next door apartments with windows so close you could reach in from your room, jam-packed subway cars and buses, sidewalks full of pedestrians – so in order to maintain any sense of personal space you have to manufacture it for yourself.

Northeasterners are “mean” simply out of self-preservation.

It’s not that someone from Boston necessarily cares any less about other humans, but if you let concern for others surface even half the time you’re in close proximity to other people you’ll be completely overwhelmed by caring for a vast sea of humanity. In Tennessee it’s much easier to attempt connection with a large percentage of the people you encounter because on any given day there are so many fewer people who will come close enough to your personal space for interaction.

Obviously not everyone responds to these situations according to the stereotypes, but I think that if you grow up in the Northeast then you are much more likely to develop the apparently prickly exterior necessary to preserve some semblance of personal space, just as if you grow up with a lot of siblings you tend to be aggressive about staking your claim on things you want (lest someone else get there first). Yes, some people find themselves better suited to the environment opposite that of their own childhood, and some people feel equally comfortable in both sorts of places.

I think I’m a true Northeasterner in this sense, which is why I feel so at home when I’m surrounded by people who will honk and swear and cut you off without thinking twice. To me that’s just how you stake out your space in the world. My subconscious definition of "home" seems to include dense population and the attendant survival techniques. But defining "home" is another story for another day.....

29 Horses

Why is competence too much to ask? And why are we expected to be polite to people who can't manage it?

Imagine the following: you arrive at a club to see a band play, and discover that no music will be heard any time soon because the sound guy has thrown up his hands in despair at the "broken" sound system. Apparently no one can figure out how to fix it, and no one thought to tell the bands about it beforehand. But no one is yelling, or even speaking firmly-but-kindly to the sound guy or any other staff member at the club about what appears to be a fiasco in the making. Finally one of the band members steps up and gets things working, and ends up running sound the whole night - all the while being perfectly nice to the people whose jobs he's doing.

Imagine further: one of the musicians that gets on stage before the band you came to see would be more plausible as a character on SNL than as a real person. The songs are bad, the complete lack of charisma or presence of any kind is almost hard to believe. The only things that make it bearable are your friends making snarky comments on either side of you and the guy across the room miming hanging himself. And yet, when this poor girl asks the room "should I play one more, or should I be done?" the meager crowd pauses, understandably, but then assures her that she should indeed play one more.

I'm all for being nice - I think being a genuinely nice person is a great thing. But is this being nice, or is this politeness-out-of-obligation actually the opposite? Is it nice to tell this girl to go on making a fool of herself so we can spend another three and a half minutes making fun of her? Are we doing her any favors by prolonging and reinforcing her delusion that she should, in fact, continue to get up on stages and make these noises for anyone too polite to leave the room? Wouldn't we all be better off - her not least - if we just came out and said that no one liked it?
Think about it. By being polite, we are 1. lying, 2. giving ourselves further opportunity to mock her, 3. setting her up for untold future mockery from future audiences.

And the sound guy: our being polite to him pretty well screws over all future bands who'll be stuck with his incompetence potentially ruining their performances. It might not be as detrimental to him as our similar behavior is to the poor girl who thinks she's a songwriter, but we're really not doing him any favors by letting him continue to be terrible at his job.
Since being polite rather than nice is clearly a bad choice, what does the alternative look like? If we're genuine and straightforward, what sorts of crazy things will happen? Well, maybe the incompetent sound guy will get fired. And maybe the bad songwriter will give up and find another profession. And maybe some guy (or girl) who's been busting his (or her) ass reading books and taking classes and learning from friends how to run sound will get hired instead. And maybe some kid who's been playing the amazing songs he's written on streetcorners and in subway stations will get a chance to take the stage.

"What happens to the incompetents?" you ask. Shouldn't we give them a break? Well, maybe the guy who couldn't run sound will decide that he really wants to learn, and he'll go take a class somewhere and figure it out before he gets himself hired at another sketchy club. And maybe the terrible songwriter will discover that she's actually excellent at writing pretentious greeting cards, and will have a very successful career. And maybe, just maybe, we'll all end up better off.

Because really, who knows how many horses until the end of the world?