Top 5 List

I haven't updated in the timely manner that I'd hoped for, and the amount of tactless occurrences have really piled up. To relieve the stress of covering each one in its own post, they will be summarily lumped into one. Drum roll please:

1. Had a nightmare that the sweet, homeless Chinese man in Boston Common that I see every morning had died. I discovered him in a heap surrounded by the pigeons that he had been so kind to over the years. The next morning on my way to work I saw him throwing out bread crumbs and was so relieved that I ran up to him and gave him a hug. He returned the hug and in doing so spilled a foreign liquid from his canteen down my backside. Upon arrival into work I was greeted with upturned noses and inquiring stares. The smell emanating from me was whiskey. No amount of standing under the hand dryer in the bathroom seemed to help. I sprayed myself down with bathroom air freshener and proceeded about my business.
   


2. Proclaiming myself a master of public transit and tempting the will of the Fates, I dared to not hold the handrails of the subway car and elected instead to read from my Tom Robbins novel. A sudden stop caused me to lose my page and also my footing. I was sent sprawling into the crotch of a middle-aged stranger. It smelled like blueberries and I told him so. I don't think he took it as the compliment I had intended.
   


3. Got food poisoning at an Indian restaurant during a first date. Feeling the chunks start to rise, I jumped up and fled toward the little boy's room. I didn't make it in time. A stream of curry-colored projectile vomit erupted from me and splattered against the bathroom door before I smashed through it and stumbled into a stall. After heaving several pounds of chicken tikka masala and lamb curry, I cleaned myself up, chewed a stick of gum, and returned to my table. After several minutes of silence, I burst out with "Well, that was a waste of money!" and snorted at my own appalling joke. I can't imagine why I wasn't called upon for a second date.


4. Exiting the house to walk Cinnamon, I slipped at the top of my icy porch and fell on my rear. Cinnamon then pulled me down the entire flight of stairs where I smacked my rump on each step before landing in a puddle of melted ice, salt, and dog urine at the bottom. My butt had symmetrical bruises on both cheeks, each increasing in latitude. It looked like a level from Super Mario Brothers.


5. Fainted at my doctor's office after giving blood. Insisting that I was fine 5 minutes later, I stood up to make my retreat and got woozy again. I intended to fall backwards onto an exam table, missed, and fell into a large bin full of soiled hospital gowns. I saw the nurse practitioner write "stubborn" and "weak constitution" on my chart.

Tollbooth Tactics

Since I moved to Boston from New Hampshire, there is one person that I've found myself missing inexplicably. My arch-rival. My nemesis. The north-bound Hampton tollbooth man.

We met a year ago. I wonder if he remembers that fateful day as well as I do. I had my dog Cinnamon in the passenger seat with me, on my way to visit my boyfriend. Because I am an utter fool, I refuse to get an EasyPass—one of those Jetson-like devices that sticks to your windshield and pays your toll for you via a savings account. I don't trust it. Nor do I have a savings account or any savings to speak of.

As I sat one car back from the tollbooth, waiting for the elderly woman to fish out $1.50 from her purse, I watched the tollbooth man. A handsome, 50-something man with salt and pepper hair and a trimmed beard—very New Hampshire. He was all smiles as he held out his hand, graciously accepting the woman's $1.50 like it were a Publisher's Clearing House check. He said "Thank you ma'am," waved goodbye, and she sluggishly pulled away in her green Volvo. I took my dollar down from my sun visor, fished fifty cents from my cupholder, and edged forward to the tollbooth window.

"Morning!" I chirped, happy to be outside in the Spring weather and en route to see my man.

"Hi." He replied flatly, his expression utterly devoid of any cheeriness that I'd just seen directed at the old bat in front of me. In fact, he looked at me and Cinnamon like we had just asked him for spare change. He held his hand out and waggled his fingers, like he were in a real rush. Exactly where are you rushing off to Mister Booth?

Ignoring the thinly veiled hostility, I reached out intending to gracefully plop my tuppence into his paw. Instead, I accidentally managed to hit his hand with my own, launching my money onto the highway. Embarrassed, I apologized and opened my driver door to get out and scrape up the scattered coins. I misjudged the distance between my car and his station. My door flung open and smashed into the side of his booth. The man recoiled in disgust, as if I had done it intentionally and with extreme prejudice. I apologized again, got out of the car, and dropped to the ground, hunting for change. Cars behind me were about as amused as he was. I found my dollar and quarters that had dispersed under the car, stood back up, and held out my money for him to take—hoping to drive away with some dignity.

"Sir, get back in your car please." He said gruffly.

Confused, I got back in my car, shut the door, and extended my hand out the window. This time, he took my money.

"Thanks." I said, still determined not to let this damper a beautiful day.

"Yeah. Thanks a lot buddy." He grunted, looking at his cash register and avoiding my eyes.

His sarcasm wasn't lost on me. Neither were his several slight insults over the course of our 60-second exchange. I decided that I hated this man. The man who had been so courteous to the woman in front of me, and so unwelcoming to myself. He drew a battle line this day, and I intended to cross it. We will meet again.

Next weekend, on my way back up to visit NH, I approached the tollbooth section slowly, stalking my prey. I wanted to be damn sure that if he was working, I pulled up to his booth. Spotting him on the far left, I veered over and gingerly pulled up to his station. Over the course of a day, he must see at least 500 people, but I am fairly confident he recognized me. He did his best to not look at me. No niceties. No greeting. He held out his hand and stared straight ahead at his mini television. Following suit, I stared straight ahead, extended my hand full of quarters vaguely above his, and loosened my grip. The quarters bounced off his palm and rolled down the highway. Not even coming to a complete stop, I just continued through the toll. I was quite pleased with myself. I hope he had to exit his cave and crawl on the pavement, hunting for my change or have it come out of his salary.

Every weekend for the next few months we continued this routine. I made damn sure to pull up to his tollbooth. He made damn sure not to ever look at me. Sometimes he would catch my money and sometimes it would fall to the ground like a battle gauntlet.

Our hatred for each other actually seemed to grow. Once when I was pulling up to his booth, he turned the red light on and took his lunch break—exiting through a side door and never looking back. I had to reverse and find another booth. My rebuttal was counting out 30 nickels and giving that to him on my next voyage. I have to give him credit, because despite the pound of change thunking into his hand, he still never looked at me. I would have given him 150 pennies, but that seemed too obvious and planned. I wanted him to think that I hadn't given it a thought. That he was a nonentity to me. In fact, I spent many hours thinking of the awful things I could do to this man. This stranger that—had things worked out differently—maybe we could have been friends. Maybe we could have hung out at a local bar, sharing beer and peanuts. He could tell me about all the assholes he has dealt with on the highway. I could tell him about the awful dresses on Project Runway this season. Instead, because he wanted to play nasty, I was one of the highway assholes that he tells his real friends about. I could hear him now. "Yeah Jim. There's this little piss-ant and his girly-looking dog that always come to my booth and drops money everywhere without looking or slowing down." Imagining him talk about me behind my back to his friends—or maybe his wife if the sonofabitch duped a good woman into his bed—made me all the more vengeful.

Maybe next time I would simply hurl my change out the window and let the chips fall where they may. If I was lucky, one would get him between the eyes or chip a tooth. Or maybe I would coat my quarters with honey or syrup and plop them into his hand, getting him all sticky for the rest of the day. I bet he's not the type to have hand sanitizer in his booth. I bet it would really put a damper on his day. I bet that everytime he reached out to take change from someone else, he would flinch as it dropped into his sweaty palm. Maybe it would inspire him to wear gloves and be nicer to people that aren't old. I mean, really, shouldn't he be wearing gloves anyways? If I worked in a tollbooth, I would. Maybe I could teach Cinnamon an "attack" command and have him leap out the open window, going directly for the jerk's throat. My mind reeled with possibilities to torture this man. Didn't he deserve it after all? He was rude to me, and I'm a nice person—thoughts of torture aside.

Our time together was cut short after my visits to NH came to an end. All of the plots I so cleverly devised never came to fruition. I actually found myself missing my rival. What is a superhero without his villain? A protagonist without an antagonist in a booth? It was sort of like we were dating. We saw each other only on weekends and all too briefly. Each time we met, we did something different. We always learned more about each other after each exchange. Our minute together was worth all the $1.50's in the world. I wonder if he thought about me too. I suppose he was pretty happy to be rid of me and watch his television in peace.

Several months later, I needed to fly out of Manchester Airport in NH. I drove north in a snowstorm to stay over at my friend's house for an early morning flight. It hadn't even dawned on me that I might be seeing my "friend" again as I crossed over the NH border. Sure enough, as I trailblazed through the snowy night in my little, all-wheel-drive, cherry red wagon, I spotted him in a booth. It was hard to see him through the snow, but I could see his stub of a beard and his ridiculous fishing hat he always wore. He was in a different booth than usual. And there was only one other booth open with an attendant that accepted cash. I thought about going quietly into that good night and driving up to the other booth. Perhaps sparing us both a last, painful encounter. I didn't have any tricks up my sleeve anyways. I was tired, cold, and unprepared. And still, my car gravitated over to his booth.

I pulled up slowly, snow crunching under my salty tires. I rolled down my foggy window and started readying change from my cupholder. You can imagine my surprise when I heard him speak to me.

"Haven't seen you in a while. Where ya been?" He asked in a voice that was unexpectedly warm in such cold weather.

I sat mute for a couple seconds, still in shock and totally unsure of how much information to divulge.

"Haven't needed to come to New Hampshire anymore... I was dating someone here but... I don't anymore... I live in Boston." I stumbled.

"Ah." he said, venturing a reticent glance at me, as if he were in trouble at school and I were a principal.

"Yeah..." I trailed off.

The silence on the dark, snowy highway was unsettling. It seems unnatural that a place designed to fit so many people and loud machines simultaneously could be so vacant and dark. The only light was coming from above us—a single bulb with no covering, like an interrogation room.

I stretched out my gloved hand to give him my $1.50 and he reached out to accept. Our hands touched as I gently placed it into his naked hand. There was no malice in our touch, nor anything sexual. It was simply two people connecting as exposed humans do.

"Thank you." He said grinning.

"No, thank you." I said.

"So... be seeing you and that dumb mutt of yours around?" He chuckled into his beard.

"Yeah bitch. You'll be seeing me again." I gave him a wink.

"Watch your mouth. I'm a public servant." He said, feigning shock.

"Yeah. and don't you forget it." I spat.

We waved goodbye and I sloshed back onto the snowy highway. I actually felt sorry for this man who was out working in a cold booth during a snowstorm at 11:00 pm and had to put up with assholes like me. I glanced in my rear-view mirror to see if he was watching me drive away.

He was giving me the finger.