Other People

I was at the Post Office yesterday, trying to mail a simple box. Not even a heavy or big box -- just a properly wrapped, nicely addressed, medium-size, lightweight box.

When I got in line, there was one person ahead of me, and I thought, well, great, this is going to go like gangbusters.

The woman in front of me was a very well dressed and proper-looking somewhat older woman. Maybe, you know, 65 years old, and really turned out with expensive looking clothes and subtle make-up. Natural gray short hair.

She and I stood and waited. And we waited. And we waited. Turns out Saturday is, like, passport day at the Post Office, and there were two clerks tied up with passport customers with name changes, address questions, all kinds of shit.

The woman started to lose her cool. She could hardly stand it, that it was taking so long. She started fidgeting, sighing, looking around.

I found myself having a completely perverse reaction. Instead of sharing her impatience, I got annoyed at her. I found myself thinking things like, "Hey, chill. They're getting passports. No biggie. Where've you got to get to in such a hurry, Missy? What's your ego trip?"

Who knows why? Totally absurd.

Anyway, after ages and ages, she turned to me and said quietly, "It's just so hard to stay patient." And you know, for whatever reason that totally turned me from critic to friend. I was on her side. "I know!" I said, finally feeling the proper rush of shared feeling. "You'd think they'd have someone just doing regular mail stuff!"
It's funny that Captain C. was just posting about driving, because strangely enough, that's what this interaction got me thinking about. I don't drive, which means I take public transportation, which means I often have interactions like the one in which the woman and I spoke. And shared. And, you know, bonded over our plight. Bonding over your plight is a big part of taking public transportation, even if it's silent bonding.

And I was thinking that driving almost always encourages you in the opposite direction. To think of your fellow person as annoying, aggressive, in your way, to be a critic rather than a friend, is the natural driver stance. In fact, living in most parts of America, most of your interactions are like that. It's a wonder people are as warm-hearted as they are, given the constant reinforcement most of us get for regarding other people as just a big fat pain in the ass.

Anyway, the line grew huge behind us with passport people. Some of them were families; there was even a set of twins there to get passports photos. All swathed in pink. Cute.

Eventually a third clerk appeared and she waved her arms and said, "Anyone just need stamps?" With a gasp of relief my friend strode over and got her business taken care of.

Of course, once she was done I was practically gasping myself with anticipation. "Anyone here for stamps?" the third clerk called out again. I held up my box. I was now first in a long line. "I've just got this box!" I piped up.

"Oh, sorry, I can't do packages. I'm on restriction because of my shoulder."

Damn!!

I Am A Wuss

Just the other day I was in the coffee shop and I went to use the bathroom and the bigger stall had the door open but the toilet there was all fucked up and the smaller stall had the door closed so without thinking about it I adjusted my line of sight so I could see, through the slivery crack on the side of the door, whether someone was in the stall.

"There's someone in here," she yelled.

"Oh, sorry," I said.

"You should be!" she practically spat back. Whoa. OK, maybe it's creepy to be checking the slivery crack. And the crack in that particular bathroom *is* unusually large for the side of a stall door. I didn't mean anything; I just wasn't thinking.

"Sorry," I repeated in a tone I hoped conveyed both "I am sorry" and "you are totally overreacting." "I was just checking if there was anyone there." I stood there; eventually she came out and we looked away from one another and I went into the stall and that was over.

So here's the confession: it made me cry. Yes, I peed, and then I washed my hands, and then I left the coffeeshop -- I hadn't even had my coffee! And I walked around the block with my suglasses on and I cried and cried.

OK. Maybe I was overtired to start with, on edge. I have been, a little. But it's also true that I am not used to being spoken to in anger. Really not used to it. And it fucking freaked me. I was so mad and ashamed at the same time, and also just felt taken down a peg in a way that felt horrible.

I remember thinking, Oh, yeah, no wonder they had duels. That way the emotions could get built up, channeled, and then transformed into something else -- like the feeling of mourning or cheating death or whatever.

And then I was thinking, "I am a wuss." Which I always have been. I mean I'm tough as nails when it comes to being persistent and doing what I want to do and whatever but I'm 100 percent wuss when someone is mean to me.

But I also got to thinking that there's more of this than there used to be, and that the young people are more. . . I don't want to say "used to it," because I think they take it hard, too, in the end. . . but more, you know, expecting it.

I guess if you have a Facebook page or a MySpace page or you put your stuff up online you expect to get a certain kind of really nasty critical response. Certainly all the forums I encounter online with anonymous comments there's a ton of this shit unless it is moderated out.

So maybe that makes it seem more normal. Maybe, too, they are hardened a little by all the hyper-competition that every thing has become. I don't know. I just know that young people are slightly making me nervous these days. They have the aggression skills, and they're not afraid to use them.

I, on the other hand, am a wuss.

But, you know, older people have always been frightened by the young. So maybe the moral of this story is just the same as that of my previous post on being a dinosaur: You, Noko Marie, are getting old.

All Hail Our Yellow Shirts! An Ice Hockey Extravaganza

I'm visiting Michigan for a term this winter, and we were out eating lunch in Ann Arbor one day and we saw a poster for the women's ice hockey team. At least, I thought it was for the women's ice hockey team, but I was wrong, it was the local high school girl's hockey team.

But it was a cute poster, and we thought to ourselves, hey, we could go see the UMich women's ice hockey team play a game.

Except, of course, we couldn't, because Michigan has no women's ice hockey team. Weird, but whatever. Anyway, we decided to check out the men's team. The regular season is always sold out -- there's a waiting list -- but last night there was a play-off game so we could get tickets pretty easily.

Here's how the ice looked before the game. Pretty cool.



I came right from work so I was wearing wedge-heeled shoes and a skirt and I was carrying my laptop in a large vinyl shoulder-bag. These were all style errors, big time, as everyone was wearing their Michigan gear and sneakers.

That's OK; I'm used to looking like a weirdo. As the game started, though, I got less and less relaxed about looking like a weirdo.

They have these things they do, the Blue fans. Their fight song is All Hail the Victor, so every five minutes when something happens or when nothing is happening the pep band plays the song, and when the song gets to the "Hail!" part, everyone stops clapping to punch their fist into the air.

Then, they like to all stand together -- especially the students -- and point at and taunt particular members of the other team. After a goal they point at and taunt the goalie, chanting, in unison, "It's all your fault, it's all your fault, it's all your fault, it's all your fault." Other times they chant, "You just suck, you just suck, you just suck, you just suck."

Here are the student fans in their yellow shirts. They're resting in the photo during a break in the action, but during play they all stand the whole time.


Writing it out it sounds kind of funny and cute, but it wasn't done in a funny or cute mood. It was angry, and intended to make the other team feel like scum. Like, for real.

This despite the fact that the other team -- the University of Nebraska, Omaha -- was clearly not as good, and was losing dramatically. The final score was 10 - 1, and the more goals UMich scored, the more angry and excited they got: One goal?? "You just suck! You just suck!"

Ugh, taunting a team losing by this kind of margin? I couldn't get into that. I also couldn't raise my fist in the air. Am I the only one who has dark associations with raising arms, and saying "Hail!" in very large uniform groups?

So I just clapped.

It felt menacing just in the sense that you got the feeling that this group of people was so keyed up, and so comfortable in their uniformity and their numbers, that if things were just a little different, they'd be entirely capable of setting a car on fire or something.

The fan I identified with most was the toddler in his dad's lap next to me. All he wanted out of the game was to watch the Zamboni. Hockey, scoring, skating, who cares? Zamboni! Zamboni! Zamboni! Zamboni! His dad kept explaining, "OK, a few more minutes, see, the clock goes down, then the players go off, and then it'll come!"

What a nice, non-aggressive, simple pleasure. In his honor, a final Zamboni picture.


So now I'm all curious about women's ice hockey. It's almost impossible for me to imagine the atmosphere at a women's game being like this. But maybe I'm just being naive. I don't know. If I find out I'll keep you posted.

No Little Girls Allowed!

That's what this sign, at the YMCA, means: No Little Girls Allowed! How often do you see that?

Actually the little girl outline with the circle and bar through it is kind of pasted onto the original sign. It's meant to clarify: this is the Adult Women's Locker Room, not the Girls' and Women's Locker Room, and also not the Family Locker Room.

That's right: at the Ann Arbor Y, there are five locker rooms: One for girls and women, one for women only, one for boys and men, one for men only, and one for mixed families.

Five locker rooms, well, it's an awful lot.

Sometimes I'm really glad it's all separate like this, because I get a little overwhelmed with all the kids and parents and its nice to change and shower in peace.

I go to the Y around around 6 - 7pm or so. It's a huge new Y with two gigantor pools, very nice, and lots of space. In the common areas, there are lots and lots parents, taking their kids to lessons: basketball and swimming, especially.

At that hour, you can tell the kids are a little worn out. And the parents are worn out too. And yet, clothes have to get changed; snacks have to be postponed; since it's Ann Arbor and it's freezing jackets have to get all zipped up before anyone goes back outside. It's just far enough from most people's homes that everyone drives there so the parking lots is crowded and crazy with cars. There's often an actual line up, like 10 people, at the indoor, airport-style parking pre-payment machine.

It's a recipe for crabbiness -- for kids and parents -- that is no one's fault. And man, even though the kids look delighted when they're actually playing games and swimming, there is a lot of general crabbiness otherwise. I can't help it -- I have a low tolerance. Watching the necessary and constant impulse-restriction of the children makes me feel depressed about human life. It makes me feel like "I want a cookie," "No, you can't have a cookie now. Maybe later" kind of sums up the whole human-existence business, pretty much, which is a dark thought.

So often, I'm happy to escape into the quiet of the Adult Women's Locker Room.

But then, you know, the last two days in the Adult Women's Locker Room, what I've overheard is just endless discussions of diet and weight loss. "Did you eat salad yesterday?" "You know, two tablespoons of Ranch dressing has, like, 40 grams of fat?" "How do you deal with McDonald's cravings?" "I lost 1.5 pounds."

Um, so even in the Adult Women's Locker Room, it seems life is basically just "I want a cookie." "No, you can't have a cookie now. Maybe later."

It's a good thing I've got M. I. A.'s new album Kala on my iPod to remind me of why life is worth living.

I Took A Pretty Picture

As I mentioned, I'm spending the next few months in Ann Arbor. As everyone keeps telling me, "It's a little warmer than Toronto. But there's more snow!"

This picture is the view outside my office window.

It's always funny when people, places, and things live up to their stereotypes. I haven't spent much time in the Midwest, but of course, fresh-faced wholesomeness is the story you always hear. And guess what? There's a hell of a lot of fresh-faced wholesomeness around here.

We had this snowstorm just as I arrived; as you can see it's the kind of snow that sticks to the trees and makes everything pretty. So not only are the people scrubbed and happy-looking, the scene itself is like being inside a snow-globe.

And yet, I don't like it. I feel bored and isolated. I also feel like I stick out like a sore thumb, since the scrubbed look never really came naturally to me. I feel like I'm the only person in a 100-mile radius wearing nail polish, with bags under my eyes.

Ann Arbor's the kind of town where everyone recycles and they try to make it real easy to take the bus. That's nice. So it took me by surprise to discover it's almost impossible to get to Detroit and back without a car. I mean, Detroit is not far away, and there's stuff there: music, a great museum, bus and train stations, etc. etc.

There's a Greyhound bus, but the earliest one gets there at like 3:30 pm and the latest one back leaves at like 6. So you can spend 2.5 hours in Detroit. Which I'll do, one of these days. In the meantime, though, I'll just try to relax and enjoy the scenery. Pretty!