The Conundrum

My dad and I used to coach my sister's basketball team. One season, we had a little conflict with another team. Like most youth league teams, this other team had a bunch of beginner players and only a couple of superstar players. One of their superstar players was absent and we had a good lead at halftime.

During the break, their star player arrived with her dad. He asked the referees if his daughter could join the game. They had been late because a Wednesday night church youth group activity had run a little long. She was already dressed and ready to play and, besides, they were only a few minutes late. The league rules stated that if a player was late to a game and missed the entire first half, they couldn't play in any part of the rest of the game. The teenaged referees discussed it and said they would make an exception if the opposing team (us) had no objection.

My dad and I talked it over and decided that the rule should still apply. Late is late and that is in clear violation of the rules. The girl's father was immediately upset and reiterated that they were late because of a CHURCH function. The fact that my dad was impartial to the excuse implied that the girl was being punished for her religious situation. I resented that although there was no way they could know that my dad is one of the most Catholic people there are. We were dragged to church and Sunday School nearly every week of our lives. If anyone had respect for religious obligations, he certainly did.

My dad simply repeated that the girl was late and the rules did not state that any exception could be made or even considered based on a religious activity. If my sister had been late coming from a church event, he would have brought her to the game late and she would have supported her team from the bleachers, in full compliance with the league rules.

Mr. Superstar was not happy at all and asked why it even mattered since our team was winning anyway. My dad just repeated that it was a matter of following the rules that we had all agreed upon. I didn't say much during all this. I hate confrontation. This girl's dad was pretty loud and acting like a bully. I didn't want any part of it. The girl's dad walked away with an offhand comment that we were only keeping her out of the game because we were scared to let her play.

We'd played this team before and I remembered that she was a fairly decent three-point shooter, but I knew my sister could defend her. I was mad that the girl's dad was going to think we didn't let his daughter play because we were scared of her. To my dad and me, it came down to the rules, no matter what the scoreboard read.

I was glad my dad was there to handle that confrontation. I don't know that I would have had the guts to stand up to that blustery man and his pouty kid. (I probably would have thrown the decision back to the referees, who really should have upheld the league rules in the first place.)

Sometimes, I see my dad like Charles Ingalls from Little House on the Prairie. Sure, he's a little rougher around the edges, but he usually knows what's right and wrong and he stands by his word. As a young woman, watching him take on Mr. Superstar with all the calm of having Right on his side made an impression on me. Family growing pains aside, there are so many instances that he and our mother showed us the right path just by their quiet example.

When you come from a family headed by a man like my dad, you tend to see life through a lens of right and wrong, virtue and deceit, wisdom and folly. That doesn't mean you don't make mistakes or knowingly choose to ignore the right thing when it's uncomfortable, but in the back of your mind, you know the truth. Coming to New York and facing all these new experiences and people has been difficult because my lens doesn't seem to be the right one to use here. Since coming here, I've been repeatedly told that you have to look out for yourself at all times, that you must make people earn your trust, and not expect so much from people. That is a hard thing for me. I was raised the other way around.

I remember lying in bed as a kid trying to understand the pretzel-y worded Golden Rule - "Do unto others as you would have done unto you." That's hard for a kid to say, even harder to understand, and nearly impossible to live up to. I thought that if I could do all three, I would pretty much be a grown-up. When you choose NOT to take advantage of someone, when you choose NOT to cheat (even if you know you won't get caught), when you are forthcoming with the truth at your own expense...that's when you've become a decent person and therefore fully qualified to enter the adult world.

Ok, so that's a kid's view of what it means to be a grown-up, but in real life, I guess that's not what other people are striving for. I am at a crossroads, and I am trying to figure out what to uphold. Do I throw my upbringing out the window and settle for expecting less out of people? Do I nobly try to right every wrong and fight for justice in this huge city of (as I'm so often told) evildoers? Is it that black and white? I just don't know. I wish I could periodically hold up the "league rules" of life and remind everyone, myself included, what is decent and common to all.

But I guess I can't. I don't really know what to do with that reality. I don't know how to pursue a happy life without sounding like a dreamy Pollyanna wishing goodness on the whole world, including that poophead landlord of ours. If the world is what we make it, can we, in good conscience, allow ourselves to give up? When do you just decide to pick your battles?

I don't know.

Like an Old Friend

I come from a movie-loving family.We used to know our neighborhood movie place by heart. That was back when you could rent movies from places owned by small business owners, not Hollywood Video or Blockbuster or Netflix. The owners would say hello and give us the inside scoop on sleeper hits. They would even call us at home to tell us when a movie we had wanted was returned. That was cool. They had a little popcorn machine and charged 25 cents for a bag of fresh popcorn. For a buck, each member of the family could have popcorn for our movies that night.

We used to get this deal that was one new release movie with three older movies for free. That was how I saw a lot of family movies, musicals, and old classics. My sister and I had two favorite movies that we would beg our dad for if we couldn't find another movie we had wanted to see. Newsies and Clue. I'm sure we rented those so often that we could probably have bought ten copies of each! We would dutifully scour the store for anything we hadn't seen yet and, if nothing else was found, we would grab a copy of Newsies or Clue and try to sneak it into the pile. My dad would just roll his eyes. If he protested TOO much, we went for the throat and threatened to choose Back to the Beach.

~~~~~~~
Because I just can't think of these wonderful movies without memorable quotes flying through my head...(just bear with me, y'all)

Newsies:

Jack: "And I said, 'I ain't in the habit of transactin' no business with office boys. Just tell him Jack Kelly's here to see him.'"

Les:"And that's when they threw us out."

Clue:

Col. Mustard: "Are you trying to make me look stupid in front of the other guests?"

Wadsworth: "You don't need any help from me, sir."

Col. Mustard: "That's right!"

Back to the Beach:

Bobby: "I believe it's the plural form, meaning more than one. Do you want me to conjugate that for you, Dad? Do you know what conjugate means?"

Frankie: "I'd like to conjugate you on the back of the head with a rock!"


Ok, thanks...that's it. I'm done. I feel better. It's like scratching an itch.

~~~~~~~

So, anyway, in the middle of all this NY garbage that's happening, we've also had to cancel our cable. So, I'm back to surfing Craigslist for writing jobs and watching our dvd collection. When we originally packed in Texas, I had a gigantic box of movies I was fairly certain I couldn't live without, but they were all on VHS. There was no way we could store all those movies here. I could barely lift the box. I had another decent sized box of dvds that I was positive were coming to NY, but I left all the dvd cases at home and brought them in a huge dvd portfolio thingy to save space. Although some true classics on VHS didn't make the trip (like Little Women and Iron Will and Tremors and Singin' in the Rain and Tommy Boy), thank heavens I was able to bring the dvds. Among the madness of rude people and no cable and weird food and no money...I'm back among friends.

Right now, for instance, Cher and Dionne are about to take Tai under their wing (although Dionne fears their "stock will plummet") in Clueless. What a fun movie...so dated. I love it. Speaking of dated, today, I watched Protocol and actually smiled when Goldie Hawn was elected into Congress at the end. I also left French Kiss running a couple of times throughout the day... Kevin Kline's a genius.

Although I've seen our dvds a million times, the characters are so friendly and funny and the music is so good and the lines are still clever...and it's all so KNOWN to me. Around here, anything KNOWN is practically therapeutic. I want to know what to expect, where the high points are and, most of all, I want some freakin' comic relief. I know for a fact that I've been on a smile and laugh drought in New York. There's just not that much that's funny right now. If emotions are actually chemical reactions in the brain (check out, What the Bleep Do We Know?) then I'm on serious happiness withdrawal. (I wonder how THAT will manifest itself...) But if watching Clue on my iPod on the subway keeps me sane and laughing to myself, then I say there are worse ways to escape real life. A good movie is a wonderful, manageable, pretend world with a beginning, middle, and end...and some great lines along the way...and I need that right now.

So Choice...

Ok, so, Shawn and I go together like Peanut Butter and Jelly...great together because they are two TOTALLY different consistencies. She can write a step by step blog about the subway-lady affair and I can't really bear to think about it. I guess my take on it is just about the same as hers, but if you read her post while imagining a bloody red tint over the whole thing like in the movie Carrie and with the sound of your own racing pulse pounding in your ears, then you'll have my experience with the whole thing.



Moving on...

Does anyone remember a show called Square One TV? It was on PBS after school at 4pm. It was this great math educational show that had music videos, parodies, cartoons, etc - all about math concepts. We loved that show! In fact, it was part of our PBS afterschool routine. We watched the end of 3-2-1 Contact (and laughed at the crazy early 80s clothes and big hairstyles), then it was Square One, finished up by Where in the World is Carmen SanDiego?. Sometimes, we'd trade Carmen SanDiego when it was College Week of Jeopardy. What a nerdy bunch we were!

You can see videos from Square One TV on YouTube. I would post one here, but my JavaScript is screwed up and Shawn won't look at it for me. (She's gonna be mad that I wrote that...heehee!) So, go look up Square One TV on YouTube. My favorite song was called "Nine, Nine, Nine" and it was about how the digits that make up a multiple of 9 will add up to be 9.

I guess that's about it for now. Just thought you might want to read about something other than the NY garbage going on here.

Sunday on the Subway

This past Sunday, we were leaving church and heading home. It was approximately 1:05PM on a brilliant sunny day - blue skies and not a cloud! We had just left choir practice (every Sunday we meet at 9:15AM to go over music for the 10:00 service and then we meet from 11:40-1:00PM for additional practice. Quite a little commitment of time, but alas...) Anyway, so we're leaving church...we have beautiful music in our hearts...it's a gorgeous day...the city disappoints, but we soldier on...blah, blah, blah.

We enter the subway at Columbus Circle and the "1" train (going "Uptown") wasn't running local, which means it wouldn't be stopping at 79th Street. We live on 83rd Street, so this is "our stop". Throughout the day, depending on the train, time of day, the color of your underoos, etc. the trains will run local or may run express. "Local" means they stop at every scheduled stop along that route. "Express" means the train will only hit certain major stops. Certain trains will run express during heavy traffic times like morning and evening rush hours, to get commuters home a little faster. It's a tad confusing, made more so by the construction done on the subway lines over the weekend. You often don't know until you climb down into the bowels of the city that the train you need isn't running. We have learned to pay attention to postings on Fridays detailing weekend construction that will affect your travel plans.

As you enter the subway, you swipe your little Transit card and it allows you entrance onto the platform where you wait for the next train. So we're underground, we swiped our card and we're following the signs for the 1 Uptown. The entrance to this platform is blocked off due to construction so we decide to go up to street level and look for "C Uptown". As we exited the turnstile, we saw an entrance to C Uptown from the direction we had just come. For anyone who hasn't spent time in New York, the subway system can be a mite confusing. So, we tried to swipe our card to get back in, but the card reader screen read "Just used". When this happened to me once before, I explained it to the nice gentleman behind the thick glass in the grimy booth and he allowed me entrance through a big, black metal door (rather reminiscent of a prison, if the truth be known).

On this occasion, while I still have "Jesus, Jesus, Rest Your Head" lingering in my happy heart, I explain to the attendant that in all the construction confusion we lost our way and needed the C Uptown, but our cards wouldn't work. I forgot to tell you that the lady in the booth was talking to a friend when we came up and she wasn't too quick to ask how she could help us. In fact, she didn't ask how she could help us, and this is one of the mysteries that make communication in New York so challenging. For one, there is no eye contact. We're in an extremely noisy area, underground where light is poor at best and you're looking at someone behind a thick, grimy window and there is no eye contact.

It's hard to know when the attendant is ready to help, so after an appropriate amount of time, I begin my explanation of what we were needing. She begins to nod her head from side to side...wait, I recognize this as some sort of primeval communication method...I think she's trying to tell me something...she asked me to run my card through. What? Where? I think silently. The attendant's friend showed me where I was to run my card through and the screen reads "Just used". She continued to shake her head from side to side, and said "I'll let you through today, but next time you're going to have to wait," and she pointed in the direction of the big, black metal door just steps away. I started to walk, but then I realized I had a question. Wait? Why would we have to wait next time? I didn't understand, and thinking this a reasonable time to be educated on some new subway factoid, I turned back toward the booth and asked why.

Honestly, it's at this time in the story when the details become blurred. I'm not sure exactly what I asked, but I remember being confused about why we might have to wait. Why would next time be different? But her answer was, "Next time you'll have to wait 18 minutes." She said this in a manner that suggested it was a statement of fact; apparently everyone knows this. I didn't however and needed clarification. "I don't understand. Why would we have to wait 18 minutes?" The attendant began to get agitated. I think she thought I was causing a problem, when in fact, I was just trying to understand. I began to explain that we're "new", "from Texas", we "didn't understand", etc.

I seem to remember leaning in close to the booth so I could hear better. Maybe this made my voice louder. I'm sure I used my hands when I was explaining my confusion. Maybe this appeared threatening. I honestly don't know. Somewhere in there I said, "Thank you" and maybe I didn't sound gracious. I was trying to emphasize my sincere gratitude for this apparent favor she was doing us. I still didn't understand, but she said, "Fine. You can just wait then."

Well, by now I'm pissed. I still don't know what is magic about 18 minutes and I don't know why she won't let us through the big, black metal door. All she has to do is push a button. I'm sure I ask, "What?" (to be read with sheer exasperation) and finally I hear, "Just go!" Christina and I stumble through the big, black metal door stunned, with the sound of her angry, frustrated voice ringing through the subway. I'm still asking myself what happened and trying to understand what was so confusing about that and how it became so misunderstood. The whole exchange lasted maybe a minute. Within minutes of leaving church, I was crying on the subway platform (the real sad, heaving kind of cry when you're just hurt through). Best I can figure is that due to the construction she had a lot of confused people needing to be let back through. I tried to give her some credit; I know that not every one speaks English in New York and it might be hard to communicate in another language through that thick, grimy window. I tried to consider and appreciate that she might have had to push that button more times than her spirit was willing that day, and maybe we were the last straw. I don't know and I still don't know why we have to wait 18 minutes, but I'll let you know when I do.

St. Paul the Apostle

So we have found a church in this incredibly crazy city, The Church of St. Paul the Apostle. We had hoped to attend one in our immediate neighborhood, Holy Trinity Catholic Church. We found this church on the same day we found our apartment on W. 83rd Street. We fell in love with the apartment (remember the new floors, new walls, new appliances and the Italian slate tile??) and decided to take a walk and get a feel for the neighborhood. Christina's mother Pat was with us, and we happened to look down the street, just one block down and over, and saw a beautiful church. It was Sunday and mass had just ended. We walked in and met the priest...we just knew this was meant to be. Kind of sealed the deal on the apartment. Anyhoo, after we moved here we learned that Holy Trinity only has male choristers. Women don't sing there. Humph! Imagine that. I am still outraged.

We found an address for St. Paul's on the Internet and decided to try this church on our first Sunday. We attended St. Paul's Catholic Church in San Antonio, so there was an obvious connection. We miss our choir family back in San Antonio! To make another one of my long stories short, we loved the service. We met one of the priests after the service, Father Jamie, and he quickly introduced us to the Choir Director, Ann Holland. We've been singing with them ever since. I'm glad we're going to church. It feels good to be there and I love the music. Today, we rehearsed "Jesus, Jesus, Rest Your Head". This made me think of my sister, Dalinda. I would love to hear her lovely Alto singing this beside me. Just beautiful! And for the last 2 weeks we've been rehearsing "His Eye is on the Sparrow". This was one of my mom's favorite songs and I believe it was sung at her funeral by her dear friend, John Trueblood. I can't get through it without thinking of her. My eyes sting and my throat burns every time.

The choir has welcomed us warmly. The church is just a block or two from where Christina will be starting school at AMDA in February. One of our fellow sopranos is a voice teacher there. Just wanted one and all to know that we have found a church home in New York.

And my take on the recent events...

Hi y'all. Here's my first post on this blog. Check out my other blog if you want more stories about my auditions and musical stuff.

My parents had (and still have?) strong opinions about words that were inappropriate for young ladies to say. Beyond the normal curse words, we also weren't allowed to call anyone "Stupid" or to say "Sucks", as in "This sucks". I will now go out on a grown-up limb and say,

"This stupid place SUCKS!"

Ugh, even typing it feels like I just cussed out Queen Elizabeth.

But, the fact remains, I have yet to feel like I could ever really belong here. I think the biggest shock is how differently people communicate (or don't) here. I know you're not supposed to group people with blanket observations, so I'll just say SEVERAL INDIVIDUALS have gone out of their way to provide horrendous customer service, to make us feel like we're complete idiots, and to withhold information simply because we didn't phrase a question correctly.

I had a feeling it would be different here, but I have had a harder time with this than I thought I might. The other day, I went into a Duane Reed drug store to buy an umbrella. I asked an employee who was crouched down restocking the cosmetics where the umbrellas were. She didn't even look up at me, she just said, "Aisle 4" as she continued what she was doing. Immediately, I was bothered that she hadn't even made eye contact with me.

In Texas, we look at the person talking to us. In Texas, a salesperson gives the customer, at the very least, that much respect. Usually, when a person answers my questions, I thank them. Having gotten my answer just tossed over her shoulder, I just walked away from the girl. I felt rude and I'm rarely rude and when I am, it's not usually on purpose. What made me change the way I treated her? In that split second, I just mirrored what she did to me. How did that happen? I have no control whether someone is rude to me, but I have all the power in the world to mind my manners. Why didn't I?

I doubt the girl lost any sleep over the rude customer that just walked away, but it still bothers me. I tell myself little things like that don't matter. I didn't right her wrong by my behavior and I don't even know if a wrong was committed. There appear to be different rules here.

This place is tiresome. Honestly, I dread even walking out the front door. There's not a smile on people's faces. You can be the only two people walking toward each other on the street and you have to rely on the curve of someone's walk to determine who's going to get to pass first in a tight spot on the sidewalk. Back home, we practically fight over who gets to let the other person go first, laugh about it, and then thank each other as we go our separate ways. I don't understand why it's so different here. Maybe people don't have the time, maybe it's too crowded for it to matter. Maybe I'm just too sensitive.

We had a choice little run-in with a subway attendant today. It was so choice, I can't even talk about it. All I can say is that our New York experience was pretty much represented by that incident...pure frustration, embarrassment, anger, and as darn near moved to violence as I have felt in a long time. If you could bottle that mixture of heightened emotions, you'd have something that would be unsafe to sell to the general public. I was beside myself.

This city is supposedly fantastic and exciting, but at this moment, I want to tell everyone here to just go to ... you know where. And that's definitely something that my parents wouldn't approve of.

New York City Living as Reported by Shawn

Well, we're here. We've been in New York City since September 15th when Christina stepped out of a taxi in front of our apartment with Bobbi "Socks" in tow. After over 10 hours of travel, I greeted her with a Subway sandwich and a seat on our stoop. I had picked up the keys earlier in the day and found the apartment not as ready as I would expect $1,800 a month to guarantee. The dishwasher didn't work; we had no hot water in the kitchen sink (and the water there tasted bad...the way old things smell); the smoke detector was missing; the doorbell and intercom system was missing; and one of two windows that look out into the shaft didn't open. This is what I remember. Anyway, we're sitting on the front stoop because as I was picking up the keys (the first set didn't work), I was greeted by an exterminator who was walking out of my apartment after a liberal spraying. He told me that I'd have to be out of the apartment for at least 4 hours. Impossible, I say. Christina was arriving soon after a long day, cat in tow...well, of course he'd already sprayed, so that's why she found me on the stoop.


I could go back to the early days of our New York move and share the moments of panic ("What have we done?"), or share the magic of that first walk through Central Park. There have been many instances of panic and magic and I guess that's what amazes me most about this city. For every one experience there is an exact opposite. I have seen extreme examples of wealth and excess living side by side extreme poverty. We have been witness to the occasional spirit of courtesy and kindness and we have been on the receiving end of some of the worst behavior human nature has to offer. We've been here just a little over a month, but I can honestly say, "I've seen it all." There is so much to see, so much going on all the time, that it is absolutely exhausting just stepping out the door.


It would be easier if stepping out the door meant a short walk to a car. That's what's hard about New York...nothing is easy. If you're exhausted just stepping out the door, imagine walking everywhere and there, too. I don't think I've stopped moving since I got here. It's constant. There is always something you need. Something you just have to have. What makes this even more fun is not remembering exactly where to find whatever it is you have to have and you end up walking a block or two out of your way just to get it. We have learned quickly how to navigate the three blocks North, South, East and West of our little stoop. Laytner's has lovely linens. The Met has tortillas. Zabars for fresh foods and we have to go to Gristedes because it's mentioned in "Title of Show", one of Christina's favorite musicals.


So this is how our story starts. I wish I could say that after a few bumps in the beginning we settled into a comfortable routine, but that would be a lie. On Sunday, October 14th, we learned through a hastily called tenants' meeting that our landlord was making illegal renovations to our building. If you don't know, Christina and I (and her mother Pat) spent several days in New York back in August looking for housing. We must have seen a dozen sorrowfully small, powerfully dirty apartments and then we walked into this building on the Upper West Side, 155 W. 83rd Street. Just a block and 1/2 from Central Park West, between Columbus and Amsterdam. We weren't even up the first flight of stairs before we realized this place was different. The stairs were even and tiled (Italian slate, we were to learn later). One side of the stairwell was exposed brick. There was still a lot of construction going on, but this building was on it's way to beautiful. The apartments were small like all the others we had seen, but we were impressed by the new floors, new walls, new cabinets and appliances...we would be getting a newly renovated apartment.


So, back to the tenants' meeting. The manager, was in trouble with the state's housing authorities. He lied about the kinds of renovations he was making. The building on W. 83rd Street was originally zoned as a Single Room Occupancy (SRO) building, where residents had a small room and shared a kitchen, bath and common area on each floor. Historically, this building has been a hostel, a whorehouse, a crackhouse and low-income housing. The problems began when it became known that the work permits, posted right there on the front door for all to see, allowed the manager to make renovations to the building zoned as an SRO; he did not have permission to gut the building and make individual apartments with individual kitchens and baths. This is illegal and dangerous. The landlord has several outstanding building code violations. One cites him for "Illegal Conversion" of an SRO into apartments. Another inspection on 10/1/2007 included notes that "excavation with no permit has caused walls to shift." This violation was coded 12, "Demolition-unsafe/illegal/mechanical demo". Within a day or two of discovery, the building was crawling with housing authorities and fire investigators. Our apartment doesn't have a fire escape. I have to say, this was something that concerned me early on. I remembered that the apartment had two windows, but I remembered that they looked out into the shaft and I wasn't quite sure how we'd escape in a fire. When I asked the building's Superintendent, he told me that we could escape from the apartment in the front and in the back of the building; they both had fire escapes. When I asked him what to do if the tenants weren't home, he pretended not to understand English. In short, we were among the first to be moved. I got a call at work on Wednesday, October 17th from a housing investigator telling me that we were to vacate our apartment by 9:00PM that night, Red Cross would provide shelter and so on.


Your time is precious and this story is long. I appreciate your patience. We were moved that night to an apartment in the building that was deemed "safe" by housing authorities and investigators. We are in that apartment now. The management office told me that the Super, George, and his workers would make the apartment ready and George promised that they would move us. Well, George left the building shortly after 7:30PM; his workers left at 9:00 (we moved ourselves) and I moved the toilet seat out of my unsafe apartment into the apartment that had been made "ready" for us. Imagine having to move your own toilet seat, and you can imagine my stroke-impending frustration over paying $1,800 a month for this fiasco. I ask anyone...really...is it too much to ask that the place comes with an air-conditioning unit (there's a place for one); a dishwasher that doesn't fall out of the space provided when you try to pull it open; trim on the cabinets, counters, walls and floors; shelves in your cabinets; a screen for your window; a toilet roll holder; and my favorite, the toilet seat??


The story ends tonight after we have spent countless hours fretting since last Wednesday over whether the entire building would be condemned (this was a real threat, but the housing authorities and fire investigators backed off when they saw the landlord making an effort to correct the situation). He's now in the process of getting the proper permits. He owns several properties and was trying to do the same kinds of renovations to two other SRO buildings. What troubles me most is that this man knew what he was doing. He took our money, put our lives in jeopardy and hasn't bothered to acknowledge this in any way. We have received no formal communication about the building and it's future or how long we're to stay in this more spacious apartment (rent would be more, but I'm not paying him a dime more than $1,800...technically, we've been told the lease is illegal because the apartment he leased doesn't really exist...blah, blah, blah...). We have considered and reconsidered every side of this, even considered staying because we love the apartment that "will be", but don't want to give another dollar over to a lying cheat. We have cried some and felt sorry for ourselves A LOT and then remembered that we still have a roof over our heads and we have options. So many don't. On Thursday, we met with our broker, Jeff and began to see apartments. We spent Thursday, Friday and Saturday looking and today we met with success. A neighborhood called Chelsea will be our new home.

Check back here later for brief updates on our life in New York City. I promise the updates won't all be this long!