To Get to the Other Side

This past May, when I was finishing up my internship stint, we had this crazy lady calling the office 24/7 to talk to anybody she could about arranging for her daughter to be placed in a housing assignment that allowed her to avoid crossing Comm Ave. This woman was adamant about not having her daughter cross the street, and it seemed she'd told just about anyone who answered the phone about her history and her argument. It was a big joke in the office because everyone had directed her to the correct office, given that our office did not assign students housing, and then had to listen to her rail about life. She wouldn't shut up, and whenever anybody thought they'd made any progress, they would return only to hear some other poor bastard on the phone and know immediately by the conversation ("The speed limit is 35, yes.") that the old bird was calling back again.

I'd managed to avoid the phone calls because I was generally in meetings or in a room where there was no phone with the general office line. Then one afternoon, I volunteered to sit at the front desk while the work study student went to lunch. That turned out to be a bad choice.

I picked up on the second ring.

"I am calling to reiterate that my daughter is not to cross the street."

"Well, ma’am, I appreciate your concern. I think it’s probably best that you tell your daughter about your expectations, because we generally do not supervise students crossing the street."

"What do you have a police force then?"

"To prevent campus crime, ma'am."

"There's crime on your campus?"

"It's generally a safe campus but we are in the middle of a city. You can check on their website for specific statistics."

"I don't like crime."

"Most people don't."

"So nobody watches the students cross the street?"

"That's correct."

"You probably think I’m crazy."

(Silence)

"Well, let me just tell you my cautionary tale. Are you a student there?"

"Yes, I'm a graduate student."

"Well, you can use this too."

(Silence)

"My grandmother, who was a very agile woman, very agile, she was crossing the street and had an unfortunate collision with an automobile. She was dragged to her death."

(Silence)

"So, I don’t want my daughter crossing the street."

"Okay."

I thought that would be the end of the insanity, but it wasn't. The next day, I had another conversation with Crazy:

"I bet you are tired of hearing from me."

Silence.

"Well, I am calling to tell you that I checked that website you were talking about, on the police page."

Silence.

"And, well, they didn't have many details about collisions with automobiles."

Silence.

"Well, I mean, collisions with humans and automobiles. There are a lot of statistics of cars colliding with cars."

"You are referring to car accidents?"

"Yes."

Silence.

"Anyway, I called the department and spoke to a, well, rather rude officer, I won't name names or anything, but he was not very receptive. I asked him about human collisions, and at first, he said he didn't know what I was talking about. So I explained about my very agile grandmother - you remember the story, she was dragged to her death by an automobile, by a Volvo, ironically - and he said that cars run people over every day."

Silence.

"He then told me that usually one student, a knucklehead, he called them, gets hit by the trolley, or he said the T, every year. I was completely shocked. Isn't public transportation supposed to watch out for the public?"

"I think their main goal is to transport the public."

"Well, I have now put in another call to make sure that my daughter lives on the correct side of the street, but I'm calling just to let you know about this T garbage in case other parents call."

"Thank you."

And then, for the grand finale, when I came to work the day after that, I had this voicemail waiting for me:

"Hi, I'm calling you to let you know that I spoke with the dean of your school. Now, you seem like a very nice girl but the dean of your school was not appropriate. When I told him of my concern, I actually heard him chuckle, I think is the right word. Not quite a laugh, but a definite chuckle. He told me he would do what he could, but I should reevaluate whether this is the right place for my daughter. Do he and the police officer know each other? I wonder. Is there anyone else I can speak to about the dean's behavior? Please let me know if you can help me. Thank you, and have a pleasant day. I am watching the Today Show and I hear it is raining in Boston. Are the sidewalks slick? Bye bye."

No word on the resolution, on whether the girl ended up on the correct side of campus or whether she ended up here at all. But I did learn two important lessons from these conversations: one, that even very agile grandmothers can be dragged to their untimely death by (ironically) Volvos; and two, that volunteering to cover a front desk is never a good idea.

Concert Conversations

Here are some interesting conversations I had this weekend with Dave Matthews fans.

"Excuse me," began one gentleman, "but you need to help me."

Now, this was early in the evening. A few hours later, and my response would have been different. But since it was early, I was polite and pleasant and said, "Of course, sir, what can I do for you?"

"Well," he said, "my view is obstructed. By that big yellow pole you got out there. Pesk." He handed me his tickets.

"Sir," I said, looking at the tickets, "your seats aren't in the same section as Pesky's Pole. Pesky's Pole is to the right of your section, which means that if you're looking at the stage - which, well, I assume you will be - the pole is to the far right of the stage."

He nodded. "Of course! But that's not the point."

I was curious. "What, sir, is the point then?"

"If I look, I can see it!"

"So, you're telling me that if you turn to the right, away from the stage, and look at the pole, you can see it?"

"Exactly!"

"Well, sir, what would you like me to do about the fact that you have good eyesight?"

This is what made working at the concert fun: you could say this shit to these people, and they didn't seem to mind it. They seemed to like a little bit of attitude, here and there. Either that, or they were too drunk or high to notice. Take this next one:

"Sir," I said to this guy hiding behind this half-wall, "you can't smoke in the park. Please put it out."

He was wearing this giant cowboy hat. He turned around slowly. "What?"

"You. Can't. Smoke. Here."

"I - (drag) - can't - (drag) - smoke - (drag) - here?" Very cute.

"Yup. Can't smoke. Put it out. Now."

"What's this, a game?" he asked. I really didn't understand why he was asking me that, but whatever, I went with it.

"Sure, sir. This is a game. I play me, and you play you. Here's the rules. When I talk, you listen. And when I say stop smoking, you stop."

It worked.

And then a few hours later, when I was walking by a broken/out-of-cash ATM (these were, by far, the longest lines for the ATM I'd ever seen. DMB fans really spend money. On beer.)

"Excuse me! Excuse me!" some insane woman flagged me down.

"What's up?" (Yeah, I'd lost any customer service politeness after dealing with fifty cowboy hat smokers)

"The ATM's broken."

"Right, we're aware. Unfortunately, Bank of America can't fix the problem during the concert, so we're going to have to do the best we can with the one ATM right here. There are others -"

"Can you fix it?" Her eyes were pretty well glazed over. She'd probably used up all of her money already on the beers. And whatever else she was trying to buy from her fellow field-seating comrades.

"Can I fix it?"

"Can you fix it?"

"Can I fix it?"

(This was actually kind of fun, because she didn't seem to understand that I was making fun of her question, so we just repeated it at each other for a few minutes, until she finally ended it with, "Can I fix it?" drunkenly repeating my question word-for-word back to me.)

"I don't work for Bank of America."

"You don't work for Bank of America?"

"I don't."

"You don't?"

"Do I look like I work for Bank of America? Am I wearing a Bank of America red shirt?"

"Your shirt is black."

"I can't fix the ATM."

"Can you put more money in it? It needs more money." She really was a drunk dingbat.

"Sure. Tell you what, you wait here, and I'll go get some money. I'll either find my wallet or a tree, and I'll come back and put it right in the machine. In fact, don't put your card in. I'll just give you a free $100."

"Really?"

She was dumb. Duuuumb.

Then there was the guy that decided to pee off the spiral staircase out at the big concourse, from the top level. Just decided, hey, I'll go right here, right on the aforementioned line of people at the ATM. Well, a big guy in line didn't appreciate the evening shower and ran up the stairs and bashed the offender's head into the vent on the stairs. They were removed.

Then there was the girl sitting in the seats with her skirt around her knees and caution tape around her waist. I had to go with security to this one because I was the token chick who could tell her pull her skirt up and walk her out. She spent a while on the phone while she was being ejected which didn't go over very well with security so I had to tell whoever she was crying (literally) to that she would have to call them back. Buh-bye!

That was another thing. I've never seen so many crybabies. Everyone was freaking crying. If you got thrown out, you cried. If your friend got thrown out, you cried. If your brother's girlfriend got thrown out, you cried. If you were sitting in your seats, you were crying (I saw a few!). One woman was walking around the concourse, completely aimlessly, crying. At first I stopped and asked these people if they were okay (well, only the ones who were in their seats or walking around. The ones crying about ejections weren't getting any sympathy). I stopped doing this though because I only got blank stares in return, or every once in a while, a story that I really would have rather been okay not knowing, about how some guy cheated on her with the skank whore who just turned up and sat down next to them and how she was going to run the bitch down if she ever saw her outside of this park because other people already got thrown out for beating her skanky ass and she wanted to enjoy the show before she cut off her boyfriend's balls and fed them to this skank.

I stopped asking people how they were doing after that.

Guys were crying too, by the way. One guy was all watery-eyed as the head of security out at the gate told him he wasn't getting back in. I love this guy because he's always calm and collected and every once in a while, you see a flash of anger and it's beautiful and rather scary. He gets pretty upset when people try to touch him on their way out. If they even touch his arm to start talking to him, he says, real flat but angry-like, "Don't touch me." It's so good! And then when this 18-year-old idiot started to try to hit him, he pushed his hands right away. People should take courses from this guy.

Anyway, the point of all of this is the usual, that people are morons but that if the morons let you yell at them and then walk away, it's not so bad.