I hate commuting. In fact, whenever someone tells me, "I think I saw you on the train...," I instantly become nervous because I can never guarantee my behavior was polite or appropriate. For example, sometimes I find myself mumbling nasty declarations under my breath when I witness my fellow pedestrians standing still on an escalator. Seriously, it's 9:06 in the morning, is nobody else running late for work??!!
For my part, I usually opt to take the stairs, two at a time, and leave the escalator to the zombies standing there like frozen fill in the blank(s).
The other day after a particularly sluggish commute, a co-worker mentioned he'd seen me on the train. "You did?" I asked, all sweetness and smiles.
"Ya. (uncomfortable pause.) "You walk really fast."
I knew it. Did you perchance hear me call anybody a dickhead?
A few mornings ago I bounded up the steps of the T Station and was immediately met by a woman with a microphone and a man holding a video camera. "Excuse me, would you like to be interviewed for Channel 5 News?"
Dear Reader, ordinarily I would've kept on walking, but for some peculiar reason I chose to make eye contact. "Okay."
"The mayor and his cabinet are taking a 3 percent pay cut. What do you think about that?" (And...GO!)
Oh no. Obviously I hadn't thought this through. For starters, I was wearing my glasses, no makeup (the lady at Pearl Vision had made me throw it all away until my follow up visit on Thursday), and was slightly out of breath from running up the the stairs two at a time, jacket unbuttoned, like a wild beast...
"Well, I don't really think public servants should be in it for the money, so if they want to take a pay cut, then that's pretty cool."
Pretty cool? Had I really just said something was pretty cool? On television no less? Oh dear. Well, perhaps they wouldn't use the clip?
Hubby texted me three hours later: "Hahaha you were on the news." He also noted that I'd sounded "kind of weird." Naturally.
Well? I was out of breath! I was rushing to work!
Sissy asked why I hadn't buttoned up my coat. It was winter in Boston, after all.
"Because the T is really, really sweltering hot, OK??!!" Gosh!
My natural inclination would have been to see the camera and walk on by, and I told Sissy as much; which caused her to muse, rather dreamily: "Ya...too bad you didn't."
I later learned that the mayor earns a whopping $175,000 a year and this 3 percent pay cut would trim him down to $169, 750. (A real Bob Cratchit. Poor baby.) And when I think of the tirades I've worked myself into regarding public figures earning indecent salaries at the expense of the tax paying public! You'd certainly never guess this from the breathy, mild mannered broad who appeared on the twelve o'clock news. New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg earns a dollar a year, but that Mayor Menino, he's pretty cool. Cringe.
And there you have it: the odd broad's five seconds of fame. I'll try not to let it go to my head. xoxo
