Tag Archives: ticket

Andre and his extra Mets ticket

I was on the Internet the other day, when I saw on my Facebook news feed that my old friend Andre put up a status update: “I have an extra ticket to the Mets game tonight. Hit me up if u wanna come!” And I haven’t seen Andre in close to a year. We’d been really old friends, but all of our recent interactions had this way of self-destructing. I was actually a little surprised that we were still even Facebook friends.

But I figured, why not? So I sent him a message and said, “Hey man, I’d love to go to the game with you!” and I waited. He didn’t get back to me that day, or the next couple of days after that either. I tried not to think about it, but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t driving me a little crazy. Because, come on, why are you going to put something like that out on Facebook? Obviously none of your close friends are interested, and so now you’re just kind of reaching out, all of your second and third tier friends. And if I’m really honest here, I wouldn’t even consider myself a third-tier friend. But still, I’m on some tier, and I responded.

Game day arrived, and I still hadn’t heard from him, and I really shouldn’t have done anything, like, I know, the better grown-up adult part of me knows that I should have just left it alone. But I couldn’t, and so I sent Andre a follow-up message. I wrote, “OK, well, I guess you don’t want to go to the Mets game with me. Thanks for getting back to me.”

And he wrote back within an hour, “Hey, yeah, I’m going with Cliff, sorry.” That was it, no hello, no how’s it going, nothing about how we haven’t talked in over a year, how it would’ve been nice to catch up. And whatever, you don’t want to spend a whole game with me? That’s fine, I get it. Yeah, maybe three or four hours together would have been a little much. But he could’ve at least responded, maybe put out an offer to grab a drink and catch up some time. You don’t even have to follow through with actually getting together. But you just put it out there, it’s nice.

OK, Cliff’s going, fine Again, I tried to get it out of my head, but the way in which he ignored me, how I had to go fishing for that response. And then the way he just wrote me off, the nope, sorry. Oh yeah, what a sincere apology. I’m really glad that you’re sorry. Why do you put something like that on Facebook anyway? You really think I care about going to a Mets game? Why didn’t you just send a text to Cliff in the first place?

And then I really couldn’t stop thinking about it. I wondered, who responded to that Facebook message first, me or Cliff? And so I tried to pull up Andre’s profile, but it wasn’t popping up. Did he unfriend me? Because he was on my news feed just a few days ago. I was getting a little obsessed over this, but at least I acknowledged that I was getting obsessed, and so I didn’t feel as bad searching my news feed, going through every single post for the past week. As long as I was aware that I was acting kind of crazy, I didn’t mind so much.

And yeah, finally I found it, the original post. It wasn’t actually Andre’s post that had popped up, it was one of my other friends, Steve. The way Facebook displayed it, I guess I can see my own confusion now. It showed me, “Steve commented on a post,” as if Steve’s comment on Andre’s post was worthy enough news to be displayed on my news feed as a standalone story. Steve wrote, “Oh man, I’m busy, but we should catch up soon!” And then, even though I clearly wasn’t Facebook friends with Andre, for whatever reason I could see all of those comments to that post, maybe because I was still friends with Steve or something, I don’t know.

“Definitely! Hope all is well by you!” Andre posted underneath Steve’s message. And down the line it went, lots of people responding in the negative, Andre replying with a friendly acknowledgment, he clicked the like button next to each response. And there was my comment, finally, all alone, unliked, unacknowledged. A day after mine, Cliff wrote, “Yeah, sounds good, I’m in.”

So whatever, again, I don’t even care anymore. I mean, that’s not true, I’m obviously still pretty keyed up over being ignored, but what am I going to do, right? It’s just, I was trying to be the bigger person here, which sounds like bullshit, right? Because I was going to be the one getting the free ticket. But it wasn’t about the ticket. I just thought it would have been cool to rekindle an old friendship. But that’s fine, you want to be a jerk about it Andre? I don’t care. You be the smaller person. I’m not getting involved anymore than I already have.

Snow shoveling, soon

A couple of weeks ago we got a pretty big snowstorm, big for New York anyway. I’m sure the people of Manitoba or Vladivostok have different definitions of pretty big snowstorms, but this was enough that I had to go down to the basement and find the old snow shovel. So yeah, it was snowing, the snow was accumulating, there was a lull, and I went out to dig. And then a few hours later it picked up again, I had to go out again a few hours later, I sprinkled some salt, and I called it a night.

And then the next day it was this gross, warm rain, everything sort of melted, but not really, the whole city turned into this charcoal gray slush pit. The next day while I was at work, apparently there were a couple more inches of snow still floating around in the clouds, and that eventually made its way to the sidewalk. Then the temperature dropped.

It was so cold that, by the time I made my way home from work at like two in the morning, there was a giant lumpy sheet of ice covering the sidewalk in front of my house. I immediately recognized my civic duty, to at least try to clean this stuff up so that no pedestrians would take a tumble in front of the property, but I was tired, I said to myself, I can do this tomorrow. Besides, I pulled out all of these rationalizations, how I’d already shoveled the day before, twice, how all of that shoveling proved to be a huge waste of time, seeing as how the rain melted everything not even twelve hours later.

I left it. And the next day was even colder, so I left it again. A few of my neighbors had left theirs, I figured, all right, as long as I’m not the only one, whatever, I’ll get to it soon. Which, and at this point in my life, I’m even more than halfway conscious of the fact that whenever I say that I’ll do something soon, it really means that I’ll never do it.

When I got home from work that night, I found that it was just me and this Greek guy next door that were the last two houses on the block that hadn’t even made an attempt to clear out a path. But it was still so cold, I told myself, even if I wanted to shovel right now, I wouldn’t be able to. It was pure ice. I made a plan to do it tomorrow, as soon as the sun was out, maybe there would be a little melting to make everything easier.

And it was significantly warmer the next day. Unfortunately I got up pretty late, late enough that the Department of Sanitation had time to write out tickets for both my neighbor and me. It basically amounted to, you guys didn’t even try to clean up the sidewalk, so pay up, a hundred bucks.

All I could think about was the hundred dollars that my grandfather had just given me for Christmas. Come on, it’s like why does the universe always have to take away just as easily as it dishes out? I had plans for that hundred bucks. Well, not any concrete plans, really. But I did plan on keeping it in my pocket for as long as possible, trying to hold off on spending it until I had no other money left in there, and then I’d break it and I’d use it guilt-free on all sorts of little purchases until there was nothing left.

So I made up my mind to actually attend the hearing and mount a defense. They’ll let me off, I thought in my head as I stood before the city official in charge of hearing these cases, “Come on,” I told the guy, “I’m really sorry. I work nights. It was so cold. This is my first offense. I definitely won’t wait next time.” Halfway through I realized that I probably should have planned out my defense a little better, none of whatever I was saying sounded any better than a little kid trying to weasel his way into explaining to the teacher why he didn’t do his homework the night before. By the time I caught myself about to use my grandfather’s hundred dollar gift as an excuse, I gave up. But not before saying, “The defense rests.” I thought it would be funny, but nobody laughed, and I immediately felt like an idiot.

“Sorry pal,” the guy told me, “Better get up earlier next time.” And that was it. A hundred bucks for Christmas, a hundred bucks to the city for not shoveling my sidewalk. And I’m stuck here thinking, wondering if only I had made up a really good sounding excuse, like if I pretended to have the flu, or if I just left out that idiotic joke at the end, maybe I could have gotten out of it. Whatever, I’m going to buy a ton of rock salt and I’m just going to blanket that stuff outside at the first hint of snow. I’m not even going to let that stuff have a chance to accumulate. That’s what I’m going to do, soon, I’m going to go to the Home Depot and get a better shovel, one with an ice pick on the other side. Definitely soon.

I was a victim of road rage

People think road rage is a big joke. Maybe. I don’t really know. I didn’t really ask anybody what they thought about road rage, or about anything else really. I just thought that it would be a good way to open up this discussion about road rage. And by discussion, I mean me, talking, discussing, kind of a one-sided thing, sure. But it doesn’t matter, like I said, it was just an opening, a way for me to say something like: people think it’s a big joke, but it’s not a joke. It’s serious.

I should know. I’ve been the victim of road rage several times. What I mean to say is, road rage has hijacked my mind on a number of occasions, leaving me completely vulnerable to wild mood swings while on the road. And to be slightly more literal, if it’s even possible to be more or less literal, one time for example, and I’m just going to get the punch line out of the way here early so you don’t think I’m wasting your time, it turned out that I was driving next to this giant truck, a giant polished steel truck, it was like cruising next to a huge mirror.

And so I had a big case of road rage against myself. I was both the perpetrator and the victim, which is really like double victimhood, because I happen to think that if you’re in the grips of a bad case of road rage, it’s out of your hands entirely, you’re just another victim of your own angry driving. But this time, with the mirrors, it was twice as bad. I looked to my right, again, it was me, my reflection, but I didn’t know this at the time, not yet, I was just minding my own and I just saw this joker staring back at me.

“Why don’t you keep your eyes on the road buddy!” I screamed out the window, but he (me) was screaming something back. You know where this is going to go right? Yeah, it was me. I was working myself up into a real frenzy. But somewhere in the middle of the rage, a rational part of my head kicked in, it said, Rob, what are you going to solve by screaming at this doofus? Why not try killing him with kindness?

I thought, yeah, I’ll smile and wave, give a really big exaggerated thumbs-up. That’ll show this asshole. So I did it, and I keep saying this over and over again, but it was my own reflection, so as I saw me try to kill myself with kindness, my fury came roaring back, I think I became more violent than ever. I started honking, I swerved a little closer to the right. No luck, because, seeing as how it was just me, it looked like this guy was trying the same trick.

Wow, I thought, this guy doesn’t fuck around. Maybe it was time to cool it off a little bit before something dangerous happened. I put my foot on the brakes and the mirror truck took off in front of me. I instantly realized what was going on, and I’d never felt more stupid. I looked at my reflection in the rearview mirror. My face was beet red, the veins by my temples bulging and pulsating.

I made a promise to myself right there that I’d turn my attitude around, for real this time, for good. Whatever it is that’s the opposite of road rage, I’d do that starting right that minute. It was time for a whole new outlook on motorized transportation. So I stopped at the light and turned my blinker on to make the next right. But I looked to the side and, to the right of me was another car, it wanted to go left. Huh, that was funny, we were in different lanes, he needed to make a left, I needed to make a right. We’d have to cross.

Normally something like this would have instantly caused me to start revving my engine, inching up closer to ensure that, the exact second that the light turns green, maybe even just before, that I’d be the one to turn first, me. But that was the old me. The new me wanted to be friendly, compassionate, so I waved the car on to go first.

Again, I don’t want to beat around the bush, but it wound up being another mirror truck. I’m not sure if it was the same one or if there was some sort of a mirror truck convoy going on, but you can imagine what happened next. No you go. No, you go. No, I insist. Seriously, I’m not moving. Well I’m not either. Well who the hell do you think you …

And then the mirror truck moved and I realized what was going on, again, I couldn’t believe it. So I started laughing. You’ve just got to let things go sometimes, right? You’ve just got to bow to the absurd and let it all roll off your shoulders.

But then the cop behind me hit his lights. “Pull over.” I pulled over. “What seems to be the problem officer?”

“Are you serious? I’ve been watching you for ten minutes, screaming, laughing, and now you’re just stopped here at this green light. What are you drunk?”

And I know I shouldn’t have resisted, but that cop just got me so pissed off, I got into a pulled-over rage, which, I’d like to make the distinction between road rage. If anything, it was curb rage, because, yeah, I pulled over. That dumb cop. I was the victim here! We were both victims! But he wouldn’t listen. He made me get out of the car and walk the line and blow into the breathalyzer, and when it came out clean, when I stood on one foot while counting backwards from fifty, he still wrote me a ticket, five hundred dollars and a four-point violation for road rage. It wasn’t road rage! I’m getting so angry just thinking about it! I’m a fucking victim here, goddamn it! And why the hell would a truck be covered by totally polished mirrors on the sides? What kind of a purpose does that serve?