TORNADO IN BROOKLYN!

It’s 5:30am and the flicker of a strobe light wakes me up. It takes me a few seconds to realize that the strobe light is actually lightning striking so rapidly outside the window that it seems someone is operating an “On/Off” switch. The sounds of thunder make it seem that we are below a bustling bowling alley. I sit up in bed with a full bladder and am irrationally frightened of walking to the bathroom, thinking that this basement apartment will be struck by lightning and go up in flames. Somehow the bed seems safer than the floor. “The car is the safest place to be during a thunderstorm,” my mom used to tell us as she drove down to the lake during stormy summer days and we would sit to watch the violent upheaval of the waves. A half hour passes and the storm begins to grow quiet, I visit the bathroom and return to bed in one piece and I fall back asleep.

Waking up a few hours later, I turn on the television to see FoxNews “TORNADO HITS BROOKLYN.” The news coverage continues to inform me that all New York City subway lines are not running, there are trees strewn across cars, and that it will be 95 degrees today. Chris pumps up his bike tires, I gather together my laptop and headphones and we leave the apartment together: Chris to Manhattan, Erin to the air-conditioned coffee shop down the block. As I walk into the café, I see that all the Brooklynites who decided to stay away from the subway have chosen to come to my coffee shop/office to do work. This makes me frustrated, watching the novice tele-commuters scream into their cell phones while gesticulating wildy with their other hand. The cell phones are turned up to the highest ring, with Beethoven’s “Fur Elise” blasting away in one corner and Bob Marley’s “Jammin’” playing along with a synchronized vibration on the table of an absent owner (presumably in the bathroom). The more experienced independent workers take their phone calls outside, put their cell phones on vibrate, and bop in their seats to the late 70s folk music once in awhile. The Stranded Subway Brooklynites who can’t cross the East River today are not impressed with the musical choices as they talk on their cell phones, plugging their free ear with their finger, “I can’t hear you above this soft rock!”

Evidently, the people-watching today is going to provide me with a plethora of distractions.

My favorite conversation is one between a woman and a man, both about my age. They are discussing her job as an anti-bias educator who teaches public school teachers and his career transition in the real estate market (something about him threatening a law suit so the firm let him go with a severance package of $10,000). Luckily, it is mindless work that I am catching up on today so I am completely dedicated to eavesdropping on their conversation.

The woman is attractive, average height, with dark, curly hair which she eventually pulls back into a loose pony tail. She is dressed in dark colors and projects her voice aggressively. In particular while the man is discussing his latest career disaster she goes, what I call, all “Bitchy-Concerned.” Bitchy-Concerned is prevalent among pretentious urban women, and it is not limited to New Yorkers. When an empowered woman is in the company of a friend who she feels is not making the most of himself (or herself), who is having a difficult time, who is not as successful as she is and has the potential to be an embarrassment, the Bitchy-Concerned feign a motherly, yet aggressive attention: wide-eyed, exasperated. They believe they are the sole individuals who can defend a less successful friend’s honor. They would like this action to be interpreted as a gracious, empathetic gesture but in reality it stems from a fear of being friends with someone less ambitious. She definitely seems Manhattan (as opposed to Brooklyn).

My first impression is to indicate that the woman is white and the man is black. But, since their conversation revolves around race issues and anti-bias education, I am now aware that she does not “identify with the white privileged race because [she] is Jewish.” She makes her point to her black male friend that she feels discriminated against “often.” She also talks about her recent stay in Los Angeles where she had been for three months and about the nice subway system there and how no white people ride it…but she did…she rode it “all the time.” Several minutes later, as he is trying to grasp a better understanding of her time there, she off-handedly remarks that she “rode the subway five or six times while I was there.” Indeed, she “rode it all the time”:

3 months divided by 5 times = NOT “ALL THE TIME”

She discusses race issues (police relations with the community, teen pregnancy, educating teachers) with her friend and he mostly says “yeah” and “no way.” She is “outraged” by discrimination and prejudice and fifteen minutes later says, “I wonder if there are Republicans here.” Oh, the irony.

The last thing I find out from her is that she will be attending a Doctoral Program at a prestigious university where she will be a research assistant for a “world-renown” professor. Of course, she is going to this prestigious university because she “didn’t want to go to Harvard or Stanford.”

I sit in my seat and look around to see if anyone else is listening to this conversation. I can’t find any eye contact, but I see one guy rubbing his forehead as he stares at the barista and I recollect another woman seceding her throne next to the conversation to drink her iced coffee in the less ironic 95 degree weather in the café garden.

The “TORNADO” in Brooklyn had thrown me into the orbit of an amazing conversation away from which I could not tear myself. I wonder if people are at all self-aware. I also wonder if I will be forced to get my doctorate in order to cancel out the idiocy of the people who are congregating my world.