The Way of the World

It was my day off today, and I usually have highly uneventful days off, to make up for the sheer fatigue of many of my days on.  However, uneventful was not in the cards.

For the first time ever I ventured south onto the Lincoln Center Campus,* in order to have a conference with a professor and find my way to this season's production of William Congreve's The Way of the World. I promptly got lost.  This is a feat of epic proportions, as I would come to find out that everything I needed was in the same building, despite my having entered and exited said building several times.

Once I knew where things were, I decided to kill some time by eating dinner.¹  After wandering about for a bit, I chose the diner with the fewest people in it.²  This place, called the Morning Star, was a phenomenal oddity. When I entered, it felt as though I was in the tiniest truck stop in Kansas; the decor was wood panel and exposed light, and a sign made from Sharpie on paper plate announced that they "now HavE GritS!" The sign did not lie.  Also on the menu: a side of sliced tomato. The wide variety of menu choices appealed to the 80 year old in everybody, and may have explained why the only other people dining were elderly folks accompanied only by their hats and newspapers. Personally, it reminded me of Country Bill's, in Portland (where you can buy buttered saltines to go with your exceptionally strong drink), so I too was thrilled.

My waiter was somewhat confused as to what a young whippersnapper like me was doing in the Morning Star, and when he walked up he put his hand on my shoulder and asked if everything was all right with me. He would later drive home his point about my seeming out of place by asking, "you're not from this neighborhood, are you?" as though anyone who was would certainly not have chosen to eat there. I didn't see why this was the case, however, as my food was perfectly fine and was served up in short order, having been expertly made by the chef (who was, incidentally, dressed in a manner reminiscent of Carlos Santana, complete with moustache, fedora, and royal blue blazer--worn over his apron).

This photo, from uk.news.yahoo.com , is not of the man who
cooked my dinner, but I would bet you wouldn't have known
that in a criminal lineup of the two. 

In any case, I left pleased and sated and went to the play. I'll not venture a review of said play here, because I never know what to make of Restoration Comedies (that's not entirely true anymore, after this class). I can now say I've seen TWO of them in my lifetime, though, which is approximately two more than nearly everyone else in the world.

One thing I will say is this: they definitely went for it, and included not only the prologue and epilogue, but a dance number and several between-act dumbshows. 

Following the play, after conversing with some friends, I realized (or rather, they told me) that I was on campus, technically, and rather than needing to take public transportation home, I could take the Ram Van. In college, we often made a big deal about resenting NYU students for having a trolley that got them around without major expense or the subway.³  I jumped for joy at the prospect of waiting a mere 20 minutes (with no walking) and not having to take a train to Grand Central for the Metro North.

My enthusiasm should have waned when I entered the van and noticed the smell. I didn't identify that smell until too late, however--it had the bitter and rank twang of sweat, fear, and pheremone that one might smell on a passenger flight as it hurtled towards the ground. It turns out that the Ram Van is driven by students. In New York City. I have driven in New York a grand total of once, and I was a full fledged human being when I did so.  These youths, so far as I could make out, could not yet successfully grow beards.

What I'm getting at here is that driving in the city, particularly driving a van filled with people whose lives are in your hands, takes a lot of (a) maturity, skill, and calm, or (b) fearless batshit insanity.  Guess which one the 20 year old male behind the wheel had.

The ride quickly escalated to a threat level of terrifying, and the whole van fell silent. I hit the ceiling no fewer than 12 times from 59th street to 190th. That's not an exaggeration. I was counting, because it helped distract me from the fear that I was soon going to meet my end.

But the well trained young man got us home safely. I am home safe, and ready for the weekend, which will not actually have any other days off in it. Such is the way of the world.


Notes:
* I have been to Lincoln Center itself several times, because the Metropolitan Opera House is there, and a Music Library.
¹ It is perhaps indicative of some flaw in my character that I designate the human needs of sustenance and nutrition to a mere whiling away of moments in between important things, and makes me wonder how far up Maslow's Pyramid I'm ever going to climb if I neglect physiological necessity. Self-Actualization? Never!
² And this tendency, it now seems, might have a causal relationship with the frequency of food poisoning in my life. I might be well advised, as a person of delicate constitution, to frequent well-established joints with a large clientele.
³ I actually think we resented them for other things, too, like having multiple food-service carriers, dorms without rats, and a real library, but that's beside the point at hand.