Christmas Shopping

I took off on a beautiful autumn afternoon to begin my shopping extravaganza. A short subway ride down the Upper West Side deposited me at Columbus Circle. I was en route to FAO Schwarz on Fifth Avenue, which is conceivably the coolest toy store in the world. Now, if you know your Manhattan geography, you know that I got off the subway on the wrong side of the island, needing to go quite a ways east to reach my destination. The only reason I had gotten off is, as I mentioned, because it was a beautiful autumn afternoon, a perfect day for a stroll across the island on Central Park South.

It was at more or less this point that everything slowly went to hell in a handbasket. Strolling brightly along Central Park South, one is almost immediately overwhelmed by that most noxious of smells: horse manure. In my afternoon bliss, I had forgotten that CPS is where all of the horse-drawn buggies line up to yank tourists around Central Park for the meager price of one appendage of your choice per thirty minutes. So instead of a leisurely stroll, I spent twenty minutes pinching my nose and running a sidewalk gauntlet through the odorous deposits the horses left for me. This, in a nutshell, is why New Yorkers hate tourists.

Beleaguered, I stormed into FAO Schwarz gasping for breath, not realizing that I had just stepped from the frying pan into the fire.

This seems like as good a point as any to discuss a fundamental difference between men and women: the way they shop. When a man walks into a store, he looks for a bit, sees something that he likes, notes that the price is reasonable, and buys the item. Women go into a store, see something they like, but they never buy, at least not right away. Women then proceed to Shopping, Phase II: comparison shopping. Having seen the item they want, women will proceed to go to twenty other stores looking for a better deal, expend three hours on the process, and then return to the very first store and buy the item.

This is not a criticism of women (or men, for that matter); it's simply a fundamental difference in philosophy. Women love to shop; they thrive on shopping. Men, by contrast, hate shopping. Their sole objective is to get to whatever store they have to go to, grab what they need, and get out as quickly as possible. The only places men can tolerate being in for more than ten minutes are software stores, bookstores, hardware stores, and Radio Shack. If any man ever tells you that he enjoys shopping, he is either a liar or contemplating a sex-change operation.

Relevance to the current story? When I walked into FAO Schwarz, I was surrounded wall-to-wall by women; it was more packed than a subway car at rush hour! This is the most uncomfortable feeling in the world, short of a man going into Victoria's Secret without a wife or girlfriend close by (and even then, it's pretty bad).

So here I was, going through the toys, seeing a nice item for a young cousin or the baby of a friend, noting the price, and pulling things off the shelves. And heaven forbid that I try to move past a woman while she's "looking" at something. Can you begin to imagine how frequently women just glared at me? Heck, I was expecting gasps of shock and surprise. I was breaking the sacred Shopper's Code, and its most vital Commandment: "Thou Shalt Look for Sale Prices."

During all of this insanity, that maddeningly repetitive and depressing "Carol of the Bells" was playing on the store's speaker system (note to Ukrainian composers: try again). I, meanwhile, was quietly humming the classic--and somewhat more secular--twisted tune from the radio, "Holy Sh*t, It's Christmas."

Shocking but true: many kids were with their parents pre-selecting their Christmas presents. Kids would pounce on toys like mosquitoes on a bug zapper and scream out as loudly as possible, "I WANT ONE!!" This, as any child can tell you, is necessary because your parents are clearly going deaf as they age; the scientist in me wanted to give them a little lesson in cause and effect. I guess the value of Santa has been eroded by big business. FAO Schwarz is designed to be like a giant playground for kids; every time I stopped for more than ten seconds a few of them would swirl around me like angry hornets. Did I mention I have a terrible phobia of bees?

Ding, dong, ding, dong, went the "Carol of the Bells." My head was ringing in the same way. Coincidence? I think not.

After about twenty minutes of this, I was ready to tear my hair out. I bow humbly to women everywhere, for you all have far greater patience for this kind of activity than I ever will. I bought my presents hurriedly, stormed out of the madhouse quicker than I had stormed in, and went back across town on something other than Central Park South. Surely things had to be better on another street.

On the way back, some guy tried to sell me a hooker and a few ounces of marijuana.

Gone are the trendy young stylists, gone are the "hair-washing" stations that require you to bend your neck at an angle that an ostrich would find obscene, gone are mousse and gel and sprays. Heck, I almost wish they would pour you Scotch and pull teeth (well, maybe not, on second thought). The place is staffed entirely by middle-aged vaguely Mediterranean folk who speak a language that appears to be a cross between Yiddish and Swahili; they don't chew gum, smoke, get interrupted by phone calls (I don't even think they have a phone), or banter with you and pretend to be your "friend" while they cut your hair. You sit in the chair, the drape comes out, they speak the one word of English they know ("Shorter?"), and the rest is out of your hands.

Probably most importantly, this barber shop caters only to men. You know that the people cutting your hair have been cutting men's hair and nothing but men's hair for years; perms and highlights are things that they just don't want to know about. Moreover, most men find something odd and feminine about the gender-neutral "unisex." Don't ask why, it's impossible to explain.

Knowing this, the barbers at my shop have devised the most ingenious pricing scheme imaginable for men. The cost of a haircut is $10.50. This seems like a bizarre number (why not $10, or $11, you would think), but on considering the nature of men and how they manage their money, this is a stroke of brilliance. A man gets his haircut and then goes to the cashier, who politely sticks her hand out for the $10.50. The man reaches into his wallet and finds the smallest change any man carries, which is a 20-dollar bill. This, in turn, causes him to get $9.50 in change, which is one of the most irritating amounts of money a man can receive. He now has a five-dollar bill, four one-dollar bills, and most annoyingly, two quarters. (And that's presuming that the cash register has the smallest exact change.) Men hate small bills and loose change in their pockets; that's why they carry twenties in the first place.

Faced with the unpleasant possibility of carrying that aggravating $9.50 around with him, the man will immediately concede to the only other possibility: he tips. At minimum, he dumps the two quarters, and probably another dollar or two as well. So what if he just tipped over twenty percent? At least he got rid of those small bills; he even feels proud because he managed to salvage a fiver from the situation.

The large popcorn bag costs $5.50 and contains enough popcorn to feed either the entire starving population of a third-world country or the 500-pound woman in front of you in line. This is obviously no good. The regular bag costs $3.75 and still contains enough popcorn to stuff a cow. You'd like to rule this out as well.

But then the problem arises. See, the "child" size has the right amount of popcorn for one average adult; furthermore, it's the cheapest at around $2.50 a bag. And now the mental block kicks in: how can you, as a grown adult, buy the "child" size bag? You can't! The first thing that comes to your mind is, "I can't take that one. That's the child size bag!" Whether this makes you feel immature or you have the sneaking suspicion that the workers behind the counter would ask you for your child I.D., you have but one recourse: you buy the regular size bag.

You then eat half of the regular bag, become immensely sick during the movie, and have to leave. Not only was your movie enjoyment ruined, but it cost you extra money to do it. And heaven forbid the counter staff foist the "meal deal" on you--upgrade your regular popcorn to a large and get a regular size drink for just two dollars more. Where the heck are you going to put all that? Now you'll be even more stuffed that you were with the regular popcorn, and in addition you'll be so full of soda that you'll be sprinting to the bathroom every five minutes!

On a typical morning, large semi-trucks pull up to the university dining hall loading dock around 7:30 a.m. (or earlier). Unfortunately, this also nicely coincides with the 8 a.m. shift change at the hospital, which means various hospital people begin piling up in their cars to get into the hospital parking garage. With the semi blocking half the street, by 7:45 or 7:50, the line of doctors in their various BMWs and Lexi (yes, that's plural of Lexus) stretches the length of the block and around the corner.

In New York, being stuck in traffic like this for more than about three seconds can only generate one response from irritated drivers. You blow your horn. Continuously.

HOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNNNNNNK!

A quick lesson in New York Newtonian Physics: the speed of traffic down a crowded street is inversely proportional to the number of people blowing their horns while stuck in said traffic. These educated dolts fail to realize that their efforts to vent their frustration actually serve to increase their frustration.

The bright side: on weekdays, I no longer need an alarm clock. I can always count on the steady HOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNNNNNNK from a ticked-off neurosurgeon's Porsche to wake me up no later than 7:50. I guess it never occurred to him that a) people live in the buildings around where he is blowing his horn in frustration and b) he is violating a city noise ordinance by doing so. One might also wish to factor in c) most of the people on this block are college students, and their normal wake-up time is usually about 3 hours after the onset of this mayhem.

As you can imagine, this honking parade irritates the bejeebers out of me. College students across the street occasionally yell at the cars to stop honking. My roommate has suggested throwing eggs at them (after all, if they're that late, are they going to stop to call the police on you?). Being somewhat more polite, I've considered hanging out a banner asking them to stop (yah, right!), or being more civic-minded, registering a complaint with the police or a city agency (yah, right!). But then one day I had my revenge.

The block was piled up as normal, and the honking parade was in full swing. And then the most amazing thing happened. One of these doctor-types became so enraged at actually having to wait for five minutes that he thew his Infiniti into park, got out of his car, and started screaming in the most whiny, annoying voice I have ever heard emanating from a human being. This priceless conversation went something like this:

Cars: HOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNNNNNNK!
Whiny Driver: Hurry up, I'm running late!
Cars: HOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNNNNNNK!

I laughed my butt off for fifteen straight minutes.

In addition to actually slowing things down by getting out of his car to yell, it was glorious to watch this self-important doctor yell at the world and then expect the world to care. Ever since, whenever the honking parade starts in the morning, I think back to that day, and I always find reason to smile. We are all human, and even the best and brightest among us occasionally have to swallow our slice of humble pie.

New York City is slowly weaning its denizens off of subway tokens, trying to get them to convert to an electronic card-swiping system called the Metrocard. The problem with this system is that many New Yorkers are too stupid to use it. When you get to the turnstile, there's a little card reader showing you which way to hold your Metrocard and which direction to swipe it, and how fast. I have seen morons putting their Metrocards in upside down, backwards, or swiping in the wrong direction.

But the absolute worst are the little old ladies (and this one seems to be peculiar to little old ladies): they try and scan their card through the reader with the velocity of a sloth. This goes on for a minute or two (irritating waiting people like me who bought tokens) until the token booth clerk notices the problem and directs the little old lady to, "Swipe faster, ma'am!" Instead of solving the problem, granny now goes to the opposite extreme, thinking she's at the Indy 500: she swipes the card through like greased lightning, which, of course, doesn't work either.

Presuming you make it onto a subway train, a whole host of new horrors awaits. Before the train departs the station, the PA system kicks in, and the conductor informs you, "Ven tth stzt z nzt. Std clz clzn drz, pz." Whereupon the car doors make their happy little "ding, DONG" sound and close. For those of you who don't speak Conductorese, the conductor actually said, "One-hundred Tenth Street will be next. Stand clear of the closing doors, please." Learning this language is vital to survival in New York, for obvious reasons.

This is especially bad during rush hour, because the cars are absolutely packed with people, and every last soul on the platform feels the need to crush into the car anyway, despite the fact that doing so may cause the whole contraption to exceed critical mass and open a new black hole under the streets. (Maybe not such a bad idea, on second thought.) The conductors look out their little windows and see people standing in the doorways, half-in, half-out of trains; this irritates them to no end, causing them to cry, "Tz nth trn n jz fe mz, lznglmn! Std clz clzn drz!" ("There's another train in just a few minutes, ladies and gentlemen! Stand clear of the closing doors, damn it!")

When the train finally gets moving, you have time to note the interesting people around you (and I promise there will be at least one of each of these people in your subway car). There are weary commuters from Brooklyn who are fast asleep, unconsciously able to know exactly where the train is, and also able to awaken at exactly the right moment to exit at their stop. There's a young woman in college who thinks she's some kind of artiste, wearing an outfit from Saks Fifth Avenue, her nose buried in a book. There's a school-age child not in school who's busy adjusting his three-sizes-too-large pants and listening to rap music. There is an older gentleman with a cane reading the Daily News, as if it were a respectable newspaper.

And then, it happens: you hear the cha-chink of the car door sliding open. There are many variations on the following scenario, but here's a generic example: two men dressed in their Salvation Army best step in and immediately announce, "Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen!" They proceed to spiel you about how they are homeless, or more often, how they used to be homeless until they got a respectable job asking for money on the subway. Sometimes they sing you a song, in the style of Boyz 2 Men. They invoke Jesus, because who on earth wouldn't give money to a man who loves Jesus? They then walk through the car, shaking their money cup; occasionally, some smart-ass drops a nickel in, and the begging team will tell the smart-ass that he's praised by the Lord. Then they leave and do it again in the next car.

All this, and people still wonder why there are so darn many cars in the city, and never enough parking.

There are a few basic rules for getting around on foot in the city. Rule one: never make eye contact with anyone, especially drivers; as one of my friends is fond of saying, "Eye contact implies consent." If you look someone in the eye, you have just given them unspoken permission to do whatever they were going to do anyway. You just lose your right to get pissed off about it later. Corollary to rule one: As a bonus, failing to make eye contact strongly discourages beggars and panhandlers. Even if they get right in your face and shove their change cup two inches up your nose, all the while chanting their mantra ("Change, change, spare some change"--this is why I don't carry coins, but that's another story)--even after all that, if you don't look them in the eye, they will go away.

Rule two: all traffic signals are mutable. Think of "Walk/Don't Walk" signs as more of a rough guideline than a rule. Streets are crossed when there is no traffic coming, not just when a stupid little sign says "Walk." Corollary to rule two: crosswalks are optional. If you find a convenient place and time to cross, do it. Cops are smart enough to know that there are better things to do with their time than write tickets to jaywalkers.

Rule three: it is okay to walk in front of moving vehicles, even when they have the right-of-way. Non-city dwellers would consider this a method of committing suicide, but in New York it's just a way of life. Admittedly, it puts gray hairs on your head and accelerates your descent into paranoia, but really, it's okay. The driver will slam on his brakes and blow his horn; you, as a walker, will respond with an appropriate hand gesture. This is how New Yorkers say "hello" to one another. Corollary to rule three: it's always better to get someone else to wander into traffic first; then you can follow behind at no risk of bodily injury to yourself. Second corollary to rule three: drivers will often try to "psych" you out by seeing how close they can come to your body without hitting you when stopping. Taxicabs will come within millimeters of cutting you off at the knees; but they're just showing that they're exceptionally skilled road warriors.

Finally, rule four: if you absolutely must travel in a motorized vehicle such as a taxi, check the car for dents and scratches first, and never get into a car that lacks these essential features. Getting into a pristine new vehicle only indicates that the driver has been lucky enough not to have an accident yet; but with your luck, this will be the trip. By contrast, a battle-scarred vehicle shows visible evidence of having survived numerous scraps around town; your survival is thus nearly assured.

It's ironic that the laws of physics seem not to apply to traffic in the city. Only in the city would a pedestrian not consider three-quarters of a ton of metal, glass, and rubber hurtling toward them at forty miles an hour a threat to their existence. New laws of momentum are clearly at work here; perhaps someone should notify Isaac Newton. Is it crazy? You bet. Is it driving me and everyone else crazy? You bet. But for some reason, it works.