A SEINFELD DAY

A few weeks ago I had an appointment with my ophthamologist to discuss the possibility of having an operation---my third---to correct a lazy muscle in my right eye.  Since the last operation had been some 23 years ago I sort of hoped that opthalmology had improved to the extent that a better job could now be done and maybe, just maybe, before I pass on to the next world, I might be able to have a photograph of myself where I don’t look drunk.  The ophthamologist listened to my plaintive story and scribbled the names of two doctors for me to consider approaching.  I, in turn, had to discover if either of the two would be covered by my insurance.

One was.  I duly googled her without putting the M.D. after her name and what came up so amazed me that I sat staring at the screen for some time before feeling impelled to share my amazement with someone, namely my brother.  Yes!  It was all true.  He recognized the name immediately as has everyone else of a certain age who was resident in the U.S. in the 70s, unlike myself.  Yes!  This doctor had had a sex change operation.  She had been a he.  And not only that, but a famous “he,” a star tennis champion.  Oy ve.    However, let me say immediately that she is also a brilliant opthamologist, a well respected eye surgeon who had been the Director of several opthamology departments and is the non plus ultra in this particular area of expertise.  What the hell should I do?

Well, reader, I went to see her. 

The day hadn’t started well.  My housekeeper had shown up late and then stated somewhat coldly, when I asked her not to knot the blind pulls in the living room, that perhaps she couldn’t work for me anymore because I didn’t like her work.  I managed to ease that over and went on my merry way only to get on the bus and discover that I had lost one Metro card and was left with a second with no money on it.  Gleaning enough change from my purse to pay my fare, and wondering what else could go wrong, I finally made my way down Madison Avenue and got to my appointment.  After an initial consultation with the smiliest, happiest, friendliest assistant one could imagine, I sat reading a magazine in the waiting area when I suddenly heard my name called and found myself looking directly into the crotch of an incredibly tall PERSON of no discernable gender.  The good doctor seemed to be wearing man’s pants and a white coat, as doctors often do:  male doctors.  She had hands the size of dinner plates and a voice that I can only say reminded me of Dustin Hoffman in “Tootsie,” or maybe it was closer to Robin Williams in “Mrs. Doubtfire”. I’m not going to discuss the face and hair because, well, we’re all getting on in years and some of us will always be a bit better looking than others no matter which sex we are.  But the total lack of femininity was not what bothered me.  What did bother me as I tried to hang on to my fast vanishing sanity was that there was absolutely no glimmer, not a hint, not a spark, not a nano-dot of humour or personality.  It was as if the removal of her manhood had taken with it her ability to interact with humankind.  And that bothered me.  I spoke, she listened.  I jested, she was like a stone wall (no pun intended.  Well, maybe just a little….)  When I got tired of my monologue, and suffering with the light due to those dreaded eye drops, I waited for the prognosis.  “This is operable,” she said before handing me on to her Operations Coordinator.  And that, as they say, was that.

When I recounted all of this to my dear friend over dinner that evening, she said to me that it was “soooooo Seinfeld!”  And, indeed, it was, if by ‘Seinfeld’ we mean that New York kind of day when the weird and wonderful are interspersed with things going wrong that turn out right.  So even if the good doctor doesn’t have a sense of humour, I hope I do.  And I’m hoping to go ahead with the op and hopefully have the last laugh.

Carriers of Values

There’s been a lot in the news about the new body scanners the TSA has brought in over here.  Strangely enough, for Americans who value their freedom but value their lives even more, there have been an awful lot of complaints about these things…mostly from men.  The pilots are calling the scanners “dick sticks” or “dick measuring devices” because of the clear view the personnel get of your body outline.  Now, I have to say I’ve looked online at some of the photos generated and I actually mistook a female for a man. That surely must make the men look pretty good?  But no, on the men’s photos you couldn’t tell what the hell was between their legs unless it was a gun stuck up there.  Personally, I don’t like the fact that the rolls of fat are clearly outlined which will no doubt show my saggy tush.  But if the damn things are going to turn up bombs wired to men’s packets, I guess I’ll just be a little less vain.

ON the homefront, there was a two-day training program recently in Baltimore for exorcists in the Catholic Church.  More than 50 Bishops and 60 priests attended as there is apparently a great shortage of exorcists over here!!  On the news, they seemed to treat this increase in the need for exorcists with some astonishment.  Are they kidding?  Has anyone counted up the number of progammes currently on telly over here that deal with the paranormal/superhuman/extraterrestrial?  You put some nut in front of one these programmes and of course they are eventually going to think they are possessed.  My daughter told me the vampire Twilight books were originally created for teens to have love stories without sex in them.  Once again I ask, what happened to Westerns?  Maybe the problem actually is that Americans can’t deal with life as we know it anymore; they have to day- dream of something that empowers them.  No longer the World’s foremost Super Power, people are taking refuge in vampires, witches and aliens…in fact, anything except the daily grind.

FINALLY, my daughter is currently studying for her M.A.  at NYU.  One of the articles she was recently given to read was so appallingly written, it needed line by line translation.  We discovered that the professor is a German currently employed at prestigious Chicago University.  It would appear that he is using an 18^th Century dictionary (no not 19^th Century, I did mean 18^th!) for looking up words he cannot translate from his native tongue.  Here is a quote Kit sent me:  “"Rather, from its very origin athwart the African riverine highways along which knowledge about the law-giving voice of the leopard was sold from one slave-trading local unit to the other, ekpe’s success had been pegged to its nature as a sacred commodity circulating against other carriers of values. "

The question is, what American editor sat there, read the paper (presumably) and decided to publish it?  If anyone can translate, please put it in the comment box.  I’m going athwart the riverine highway of Columbus Avenue to get some aspirin after that.

THE COSMIC SCALE

Last night as I was leafing through a magazine in an attempt to induce somnolence I was jolted back to awareness by a full page colour advert for---CAN IT BE?--- cigarettes.  Since I was under the impression that cigarette advertising had been banned, as it certainly has in the U.K., I wasn’t quite sure what I was looking at.  “Natural American Spirit” sounds so innocuous, with their ‘sandals and oats’ packets showing an Indian smoking the peace pipe, that I couldn’t quite comprehend that this was an actual tobacco product.  But there it is in huge letters:  “100% U.S. Grown Tobacco,” obviously something to be proud of.  “Share the love,” it says, “100% additive free natural tobacco.”  In my hazy state I read it as “addictive-free” before reading it again.  Natural tobacco?  Is there any other kind?  I didn’t even know tobacco came from other countries; I sort of thought that down there in Raleigh/Durham and Salem and places they were growing enough of the stuff for the current market.  NO?

Not only are they offering $20 in gift certificates (surely that can’t be legal?) they go on to tell us, “On the Cosmic Scale it may be a small thing, but then, to the many farmers we support it’s actually a pretty big deal.”  And not only that, but it means “….safeguarding the environment through encouraging sustainable agriculture, by shipping across shorter distances, and by reducing fuel use and emissions.  It means we can improve the big picture by focusing on the details.  IT’S WHAT WE DO!”  Wow!  It seems that if you smoke these things you’re positively helping the American economy----indeed, helping the Universe! Isn’t that sustainable agriculture similar to the US trying to get all those coca farmers down in Colombia to grow pineapples instead?  Heck, hang the consequences:  let’s all band together and smoke ourselves silly sharing the love!

Oh, but then come the warnings:  “No additives in our tobacco does NOT mean a safer cigarette,” and “Smoking Causes Lung Cancer, Heart Disease, Emphysema, and may complicate Pregnancy.”  Well, surely since they’ve just written two pages about sharing the love and helping farmers, the gamble is worth it?

On television there is no cigarette advertising but there is advertising for pharmaceuticals, something which the U.K. also does not have.  I often wonder what doctors think of this:  are we supposed to be going in to our doctors well-informed when they tell us they are going to put us on ABC or are the drug companies just hoping that we go into the doctors demanding to be put on ABC?  I have a cardiologist at the moment who is about half my age.  He rather looks as if he just stepped off his surf board and came in from the beach, but, my gosh, does this guy know his stuff.  It would be a cold day in hell before I went in and demanded to be put on something I saw advertised on television.  And why would I?  The drug companies, just like the cigarette companies, have to give you all sorts of warnings.  After the happy little scenario encouraging you to want the particular medication they are selling, someone goes on to give you a list of possible side effects that make cigarette smoking look positively healthy and life-enhancing.

So, on the Cosmic Scale where does this put us?  We’ve got cigarette companies asking us to share the love but warning about heart disease while happy couples headed off to the bedroom on Viagra or Cialis are warning about four hour erections.

 Hmmm. I guess I know on whose side the cosmic scale is balanced…

NO IT’S NOT ME

     Today is Hallowe’en---at last.  It seems to have been going on since Labor Day at the beginning of Sept.  Preparations started with decorations for sale in the shops, quickly followed by the appearance of pumpkins anywhere a pumpkin can appear.  Then came the costumes, and how New Yorkers love their costumes!  Hallowe’en used to be about kids going out and ringing doorbells for candy.  Now it’s about everyone dressing up to mimic their favourite television personalities.  And I have to ask myself :  why?

Throughout the year New Yorkers dress up in costume.  The list of parades for this city is longer than my monthly shopping list.  Starting in January there is the Three Kings Parade in Spanish Harlem and the parade for Chinese New Year which may run into February along with the parade for Lunar New Year in case you missed the fact that Chinese New Year starts on the Lunar New Year.  February also sees the President’s Day Parade.  March of course sees the St. Patrick’s Day parade but if that isn’t enough for Irish Americans there is also the Irish American Parade followed by the Greek Independence Day parade and the Phagwha Parade celebrating the triumph of good over evil.  Phew! April has the Easter Parade, bonnets and all, along with the Sikh Cultural Society Parade with headdress of their own and of course there has to be an April Fool’s Parade so New Yorkers can dress like their favourite fool.  Then with better weather coming along we get into the thick of it:  multiple Memorial Day Parades in May are followed  by  Cuban Day, Bronx Latinos Unidos, Dance March, Global Marijuana March, Turkish-American Parade, Haitian Flag Day, Norwegian-American 17th of May, Martin Luther King Jr./369th Regiment Parade, Haitian-American Day Parade and Greater NY Good Neighbor Parade.  Are you beginning to get the hang of this?  June is the month for Gay Pride parades but also for Hare Krishna, Puerto Rican Day, Children’s Evengelical, the Bronx and Mermaids in Coney Island.

I am tempted to stop there at the half way mark as you no doubt have the idea by now.  Indians, Dominicans, Pakistanis, African Americans, Caribbean families, Brazilians, Mexicans, Poles, Nigerians, Muslims, and Hispanics are all getting their own parades and dressing up accordingly.  Then, in November, will be the biggy of them all, The Thanksgiving Day Parade.  The floats for this are inflated outside my building causing all sorts of havoc in the streets but not as much havoc as the parades themselves cause.

Back in London we had Notting Hill Carnival for the Jamaican and other Caribbean population, the Lord Mayor’s Parade and the Trooping of the Colour for the Queen’s Birthday.  There were probably Chinese New Year goings on and Gay Pride certainly had parades but I really can’t think of anything else.  Reminders welcome in the comment box.

I realize that New York is a melting pot.  But if it is a melting pot why haven’t these people melted into the general population?  The Statue of Liberty is standing out there saying, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…” NOT “give us more reasons for parades every other day of the week.”  Pride in your ancestry is one thing but dressing up in costume and marching down Fifth Ave. ? As someone recently said, my grandparents didn’t get on a boat and come all the way over from Europe just to be faced with a nation of Immigrants!

So I have come to the conclusion that it has nothing at all to do with pride in one’s ancestry but rather the innate desire to be another person, to re-invent oneself and to let go of your persona for that brief moment.  To dress up and be someone else.

Maybe New Yorkers are fed up with being New Yorkers?