Just Shut Up, Already!

It hasn't stopped snowing, it seems, since the Bush Administration. There are no more fire hydrants. There are no more curbs. There are no more trees. Everything is covered in gargantuan mountains of black and gray and white New York snow. There is civil unrest brewing; you can feel it. People are beginning to snarl at each other. Paths between the aforementioned mountains are narrow and erratic. Sometimes you have to yield your right-of-way. Sometimes you don't want to. Rumor has it that there's a movement afoot to assassinate all the local meteorologists, including Sam Champion, for goodness sake. Craig Allen I could maybe understand, but Sam Champion? By the way, do you think Sam Champion is his real name? And if so, shouldn't he have gotten himself a mask and a cape and some tights and gone on to a career as a superhero? Most folks understand that the weather guys are not actually in charge of the weather, but there is always the fringe element that's perfectly happy to shoot the messenger. The reason I bring all this up is to illustrate that it's become exceedingly rare to have a civil conversation with a stranger anywhere in Brooklyn. People are just fed up with all the snow and many have become downright ornery. So when I met Harvey the other day, he was a pleasant surprise. I had asked two of my landlord's sons to try and dig my car out for me. I hate to admit it, but I have become totally physically incapable of such arduous tasks. But I said that I'd only allow them to do it if they'd accept money from me. They adamantly refused. I now interrupt this post for a word about my landlord and family: I really lucked out this time. He's a really nice guy, his wife sends me warm potato kugel almost every Friday and his kids (seven boys and one girl, some married) are great. So the two boys, ages about seventeen and ten, are cleaning off my car when Harvey shows up. He's parked right across the street, and his car is even worse than mine; it's pretty much just one big mound of snow. Now the kids are splitting their time between my car and Harvey's. I really didn't mind; I had nowhere important to go. I just wanted the option to drive if there was an emergency, like if I suddenly needed to go to the movies. So now there was nothing left for me to do but crawl back into my apartment, which didn't feel right, or shmooze with Harvey. So I shmoozed with Harvey. Or, more accurately, he shmoozed with me. When I approached him, I noticed that there was something physically wrong with him, but I couldn't quite figure out what. He was just standing there in a slightly awkward, unnatural position. He told me he was sixty-six (obviously way older than I) and how very happy he was to meet me and how very happy he was to still be around. Ooookay. What have I gotten myself into, I thought. Then he launched into his story. Harvey had been in a horrific car accident some years ago and had almost died. That's when I let the conversation turn into a "can you top this?" Oh yeah, I thought, you think you've got problems? I proceeded to pull out my trusty "in-a-coma-and-almost-dead-at-Columbia Presbyterian" picture from my wallet, where I keep it handy for just such an occasion. Didn't even slow him down. He was about to give me all the gory details about the accident when I played my trump card: I showed him my trach scar. No good. He had the unmitigated gall to show me his. Uh-oh, I thought; I might actually have met my "please feel sorry for me" match. So I finally just shut up and let Harvey talk. The firemen had cut him out of the car with the "jaws of life", he said. The cops had mistakenly told his wife that he was dead, he said. And, just for good measure, he told me that as a result of the accident, he could no longer lift his arms, so his hands, although not paralyzed, were pretty much useless (I'm still trying to figure out how he drove his car). There was no doubt about it: Harvey was in worse shape than I. What a chutzpah! But seriously, I did learn a valuable lesson from our conversation: telling someone about your problems gets old really quickly. About halfway through Harvey's tale of woe, in spite of the fact that I was really, really trying to be a good person and listen, I started zoning out. When the subject was not my traumatic experience, I simply lost interest and lost it fast. So that left me with two heavy questions to ponder: 1. What does that say about me?, and 2. Am I guilty of the same offense, boring people to tears with my own problems? I'm still working on figuring out the answer to the first one. The second one is kind of rhetorical.