Anger Management Anyone?

One thing I never thought I'd do is get into a morning exercise routine. I am not a morning person and I need more than a little time to get rolling every day. Since I really don't know when I'm getting out of work each day, however, working out before work is my only real option.

The gym is quite serene in the morning compared to the frantic scene in there at night. This morning the quiet was broken by a certified raving lunatic. New Yorkers are sometimes portrayed in popular culture as brash, loud and profane, but few could quite meet the stereotype like the disgruntled customer who was shouting at the top of his lungs at the customer service desk. Apparently, he was disturbed by the lack of attention his request to cancel his membership was receiving, so he became comically hysterical:

"This gym will not cancel my membership. They've got my credit card and they're not giving it up."
"My friends have had to go through this f&%*ing s#@t and I'm not going to stand for it."
"This is a f&%*ing homosexual gym anyway. Hey buddy, why don't you go suck your boyfriend!"
"I was on the phone for two f&%*ing hours yesterday and got nowhere and you people are not going to ignore me anymore!"

There was a lot more swearing, a stroll through the gym where he made some more homophobic remarks and even some urgent pleas to prospective customers: "do not sign up for this gym! They won't let you f&%*ing quit!" I am sure his voice was heard in every corner of the gym. This scene ended as you could have guessed, with a very young and slightly exasperated member of New York's finest escorting the man out of the building.

I think gyms receive a staggering amount of consumer complaints every year, so I do have some sympathy for that guy. Plus, I have, believe it or not, been driven to out-of-control rants at customer service people in the past. Minus the hateful language of course. The thing that always occurs to me after I've calmed down is that an emotional outburst with that much ferocity usually has more behind it than the matter at hand. During a more civil part of the discussion (with the police officer present) I heard the word "ex-wife" several times. I think this guy may have been angry about a little more than canceling his gym membership.

Dogs Don't Hold Grudges

Tonight I was coming back from our nightly walk and the dog and I ran into a neighbor in the stairway of my building. He was holding up a very large Christmas tree on the landing. My dog seemed a bit confused about why the tree was in the house. The man holding the tree reached down, patted the him, and said, "hello, Buddy." (Earlier this morning, I yelled "Stop" -- and nothing else -- at the dog when he began to eat some trash off the street and one of the high school kids on the corner of 49th and 8th said, "Don't eat garbage, Buddy!" We're becoming known around these parts.) The greeting in the stairwell was a nice moment of familiarity with a neighbor, and contrasted greatly with one of my first meetings back in the spring when I moved in.

There is a woman who comes every morning to one of the apartments downstairs and leaves her two children with a relative or a friend. The first time I met them, I decided I would break out all the charm and I said to the mother regarding the little girl, "and who do we have here?" "That's Sophie," she said and instructed the little girl to say hi. Instead of greeting me, with all the vigor a three year old kid can muster, she wound up and spit at me. "SOPHIA!" the mother shouted.

We've seen each other many times since the spitting incident, however, and she's remained civil. This evening Sophie asked if she could pet the dog on the stoop when we were coming in from a walk. I said, "of course," and Sophie took a step towards Buddy and when they were nose-to-nose, he licked her all over her face. She squealed with delight. There's loyalty for you -- imagine how friendly Buddy would have been if she'd kicked me in the ankle after spitting at me.

The Clothes Make the Man

A few years ago while I was living in Atlanta, I experienced an intervention. A female friend of mine and I were walking by Old Navy and she unexpectedly took me inside, brought me to the bluejeans, selected a few and pointed me to the dressing room. Apparently, my jeans were out of style and didn't fit right. Since I was a graduate student, bluejeans were all I ever wore and apparently I looked like a homeless person from the 1980s or something. Since that time, I've been a little sensitive about the whole issue. I still don't pay much attention to what I'm wearing, but at least I try not to look like I'm wearing someone else's pants.

Yesterday, I bit the bullet and went on my every-three-years pilgrimage to buy some jeans at Macy's. (I went to the Macy's by the way, at 34th Street and Broadway.) They were having a denim sale. It was pandemonium on floor "1 1/2". Before I could even get my bearings, a very assertive saleswoman shouted "what size are you looking for sir?" at me. I pointed to a pair in my size at the top of the nearest pile and that seemed to satisfy her. I was left standing staring at a sea of denim. What the heck is relaxed-fix skinny boot cut, anyway? Did we have all these variations when I was a kid? Do I need colorful stitching and buttons on my back pocket? I selected a few pairs and then got on the line for the fitting room. This is something I learned at my intervention. You should try pants on before you buy them. The assertive lady buzzed by and told us to stand closer to the wall. She instructed a young woman from Europe somewhere that she could not go into the changing room and she could not stand in line with her man. She then told me to watch my head as she hurled a pair of pants onto a shelf over my head.

I went into the changing room and slipped on a pair of pants, only to discover there was no zipper, but instead, six buttons. Why would big clunky buttons ever be preferable to a zipper, I wondered? I buttoned 5 of the 6 buttons looked in the mirror, and decided I looked like a middle-aged dad trying to wear his son's pants. Plus, the price tag said $60. Unless I got a free backrub with those pants, I wasn't paying $60. I returned the three pairs I had tried on to the shelf, went and found the jeans I always get -- with zippers. I couldn't face the long line for the changing room, so I made my purchase and walked out of the store. You can teach an old dog new tricks, but you can't make him go into the fitting room twice.