In the fall of 1998, I started working at McGraw-Hill’s School Division, located then at Two Penn Plaza, literally right above Penn Station, i.e. the last place in the city you’d ever want to be. This is how I got my start in educational publishing, but it was completely accidental. I didn’t want this job and told the interviewer as much, but was then offered the job anyway. (I have been tempted to use this approach on other interviews, but have never been brave enough to actually try it.)
One of the more notable things about this job was a certain co-worker I had at the beginning. When he was gone my other co-workers and I finally were able to say out loud that he might have been something like 400 pounds. For about six months, we listened to his loud angry phone calls in which he tried to return things, such as a bed at a store called “Relax the Back” (which I can only say out loud in the serious angry way he said it) and his lunch on an almost daily basis because it was never quite right. For example: He wanted his broccoli not undercooked, did they understand that, because some people liked broccoli that wasn’t entirely cooked, but he didn’t, he could not eat it that way, and did they understand that? Sometimes the anger would be saved for the poor delivery boy who actually brought his (imperfect) lunch all the way up to the 23rd floor and then was given a mouthful for his effort.
Much of this anger (according to him, anyway) was based on the fact that the guy who was in the TV show “The Fugitive” threw a ball at his head when he was a kid and it permanently damaged him. I’m not entirely clear on when this happened exactly, or why, or how the guy in “The Fugitive” ended up throwing a ball at a kid in the late 1960s in a Boston suburb, but no matter. This was his story and it pretty much explained everything about him (according to him). Which is why we shouldn’t have been surprised when he smashed his chair to pieces in the office one afternoon. But we were all very very surprised, as a matter of fact.
Due to his size, he could not fit into regular office chairs comfortably or, in some cases, at all, and there were very many attempts to find a chair that would suit him. The HR people were always coming around with some new kind of chair that would seem good at first, but would eventually anger him and cause a series of phone calls that we were all privy to, as we were to the daily lunchtime calls. (You’d think that working with him would be entertaining, and it was sometimes, but it was also exasperating. He wasn’t even very good at his job, which meant that he had absolutely nothing going for him, in all honesty.) The HR people were extremely delicate about the situation and responded to his angry calls as though they were perfectly reasonable. But then one day when we were all sitting at our desks, working, or not working, but at least looking at our computer screens, we were stunned to hear the sound of smashing wood nearby. Not a single one of us turned away from our screens. This angry 40something, 400-pound man was smashing his wooden chair to bits.
The next day the HR people returned with a bench. What I mean is, they brought in a wooden bench, the kind you might see in a park or in someone’s backyard and could fit maybe four or five people comfortably (I should probably mention, shamefully, that after our angry co-worker had left, the remaining five of us in our particular section of the office took pictures of ourselves sitting together in the bench. There was plenty of room.). Anyway, the HR people left this bench for him as one final attempt at an office chair. You’d think that he might have been insulted by such a gesture, but no, he was delighted. The chair was apparently just the right size and comfort level for him, and so for the remainder of his time there, he was what you might call slightly less angry.
Now when we first started at this job we were all contract workers there, and in a few months our contracts were up. It was then that our angry co-worker made the startling discovery that all of us had had our contracts renewed, all of us but him. He went around asking all of us and then complaining to the higher-ups, but really there was nothing he could do. They told him that they didn’t need as many people anymore. The fact that they needed all of us minus him was not lost on him, of course, but he ended up just accepting it finally. I wish I could remember his last day there, but I can’t. And you’d think that we might have missed him when he was gone, but we didn’t, not for a single minute. I have no idea what became of him, but I do hope that he has at least a comfortable place to sit.
Monday, February 6, 2012
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
A Case Study
I’m sure other people have spent entire days at the dentist, which maybe makes my particular day unremarkable, but paying ten dollars for the privilege is really something else.
They have this dental clinic at the local community college, in which students in dental hygiene get to practice on the public, for which the public receives a $10 dental exam and a cleaning, which honestly you can’t beat. A week before my exam, a girl named Shayla with a teeny tiny voice called me and asked about a hundred questions that I happily answered because she was so earnest and sweet. She called a couple more times with questions about seemingly unimportant things (what vitamins I took), but this was all done in the interest of time.
Except that on the day of the exam, as the door to the waiting room kept opening with a new young shiny-faced dental hygiene student calling out someone’s name, I was the last one called. But Shayla did finally show up, and she led me into the clinic, which looked exactly like a regular office with fluorescent lighting and dozens of cubicles, except that in each cubicle next to the desk and in place of, I don’t know, a file cabinet or wastebasket or something, there was a dentist’s chair. It really was a fantastic looking place.
It’s probably obvious to point out that during the visit Shayla sat at her tiny desk and I sat in the dentist’s chair. (An aside: sometime in the late 70s my dad, whose interest in objects left out on New York City streets is legendary, found a gynecologist’s chair and brought it home. I thought it was a dentist’s chair and was never disabused of this notion. I did notice, however, that adults always chuckled at my referring to it as a dentist’s chair and also that it was a total hit at parties. Years later I asked my dad, Whatever happened to that dentist’s chair you picked up from the street? He responded, laughing, Dentist’s chair? That was a gynecologist’s chair! I felt glad that I hadn’t actually known this.)
Anyway. I noticed immediately a little wrapped package on the small table next to my chair, which turned out to be Shayla’s instruments. Shayla mentioned that the instruments were wrapped like that to show they were sterile. They were sterilized in…an autoclave? I asked, because now that I’m writing chapter tests for a medical textbook I have picked up all kinds of information like that. (Ask me about skin diseases!) Yes, she said, completely unimpressed, looking through her instruments. There were tons of them.
Say, did you know that those little hook things are used to measure your teeth? Now wait, I know it sounds like I got tricked, the way that dentists tell kids they’re just going to count their teeth, but really those little instruments have a line on them and they put them up to your teeth to see how far the gum has receded. All this time I thought they used them to pick at your teeth! They are called probes. Did you know that? Does anyone tell us these things except dental hygiene students who are being asked a million nonstop questions that they are, for some reason, happy to answer?
The picking or measuring or whatever went on and on. Shayla had to write down something for every single tooth. There was apparently a problem with number 19. An instructor came over and they had a little talk about my tooth number 19. Turns out I brush my teeth too hard! I have ruined one of my teeth, fool that I am. Sheesh. Also Shayla wasn’t sure but she also thought that maybe I had some bone loss. What is that exactly? I asked, instantly terrified. She explained it to me in precise details that I can no longer remember, but ultimately it came down to: we won’t really know until we do an x-ray. And then I was immediately scheduled for an afternoon x-ray and Shayla explained all about how if there was bone loss then I might actually become her case study and then I’d have to come back a few more times. She then explained that she needed a case study to graduate and asked if I would mind being her case study if it turned out I had bone loss. Do you want me to be your case study? I asked. Oh, I would love it! she said, completely thrilled, and so I agreed, despite realizing that a part of her wanted something terrible to show up in the x-rays.
At some point I exclaimed, My teeth are a mess! I’m the worst patient you’ve ever seen. Oh no, she said. There was this woman, she was like 25, and she already had mobility. (Mobility means loose teeth.) Really? I said, not bothering to disguise my excitement. Yeah, she said. She had celiac disease and I guess her diet was really bad for her teeth. Her gums would not stop bleeding. She never came back again, she added wistfully. Yeah, but, okay, I said, tell me about someone that had bad teeth that didn’t have celiac disease. Oh there was this guy, she began. He never brushed his teeth….
At this point two hours had gone by.
What with all the picking and numbering of teeth and scheduling the afternoon x-rays there hadn’t even been time for a cleaning and so I had to schedule one for the following week, even though Shayla explained again (a little too excitedly) that if I were her case study, it would mean coming back a few more times after that. Fine. Now it was time to leave and come back to the afternoon clinic.
[Insert scene in which I spend the next hour and a half at Target happily trying on boots and sampling dozens of moisturizers.]
Back at the dental clinic, for my x-rays, I had another student, Caitlin, who was less ridiculously wholesome (when I’d asked Shayla if she liked that crap radio station they had playing in the office, she mentioned that once a song had come on that almost had a swear word in it and she was amazed because elderly people come in there!) and also less of a doomsayer (Caitlin: “I’m not a doctor, so I can’t really make a diagnosis, but your teeth look fine!”). I went into the x-ray cubicle and got into the dentist’s chair. They were just trying out the new digital x-ray machine in the office and though it was flattering to hear the supervising dentist say constantly, Wow, that’s gorgeous! about pictures of my teeth, it also took over an hour to get them all done. Caitlin had to set up each shot and then get each picture approved by her instructor, an actual dentist. Digital x-rays still involve that terrible contraption that they put in your mouth, but the results pop up seconds later on the computer screen in front of you, which is a little bit thrilling. The shots of my teeth were discussed and admired for their density.
After all of that, it turned out that I had minimal bone loss, which wasn’t terrible, and I was told that Shayla would explain all of that to me at my next visit. Except someone’s going to have to break it to her that I won’t be her case study. Maybe that girl with celiac disease will return or the guy who never brushed his teeth? I'm sure there must be someone out there with bad teeth and a spare couple of weeks that will help Shayla graduate. One can only hope.
They have this dental clinic at the local community college, in which students in dental hygiene get to practice on the public, for which the public receives a $10 dental exam and a cleaning, which honestly you can’t beat. A week before my exam, a girl named Shayla with a teeny tiny voice called me and asked about a hundred questions that I happily answered because she was so earnest and sweet. She called a couple more times with questions about seemingly unimportant things (what vitamins I took), but this was all done in the interest of time.
Except that on the day of the exam, as the door to the waiting room kept opening with a new young shiny-faced dental hygiene student calling out someone’s name, I was the last one called. But Shayla did finally show up, and she led me into the clinic, which looked exactly like a regular office with fluorescent lighting and dozens of cubicles, except that in each cubicle next to the desk and in place of, I don’t know, a file cabinet or wastebasket or something, there was a dentist’s chair. It really was a fantastic looking place.
It’s probably obvious to point out that during the visit Shayla sat at her tiny desk and I sat in the dentist’s chair. (An aside: sometime in the late 70s my dad, whose interest in objects left out on New York City streets is legendary, found a gynecologist’s chair and brought it home. I thought it was a dentist’s chair and was never disabused of this notion. I did notice, however, that adults always chuckled at my referring to it as a dentist’s chair and also that it was a total hit at parties. Years later I asked my dad, Whatever happened to that dentist’s chair you picked up from the street? He responded, laughing, Dentist’s chair? That was a gynecologist’s chair! I felt glad that I hadn’t actually known this.)
Anyway. I noticed immediately a little wrapped package on the small table next to my chair, which turned out to be Shayla’s instruments. Shayla mentioned that the instruments were wrapped like that to show they were sterile. They were sterilized in…an autoclave? I asked, because now that I’m writing chapter tests for a medical textbook I have picked up all kinds of information like that. (Ask me about skin diseases!) Yes, she said, completely unimpressed, looking through her instruments. There were tons of them.
Say, did you know that those little hook things are used to measure your teeth? Now wait, I know it sounds like I got tricked, the way that dentists tell kids they’re just going to count their teeth, but really those little instruments have a line on them and they put them up to your teeth to see how far the gum has receded. All this time I thought they used them to pick at your teeth! They are called probes. Did you know that? Does anyone tell us these things except dental hygiene students who are being asked a million nonstop questions that they are, for some reason, happy to answer?
The picking or measuring or whatever went on and on. Shayla had to write down something for every single tooth. There was apparently a problem with number 19. An instructor came over and they had a little talk about my tooth number 19. Turns out I brush my teeth too hard! I have ruined one of my teeth, fool that I am. Sheesh. Also Shayla wasn’t sure but she also thought that maybe I had some bone loss. What is that exactly? I asked, instantly terrified. She explained it to me in precise details that I can no longer remember, but ultimately it came down to: we won’t really know until we do an x-ray. And then I was immediately scheduled for an afternoon x-ray and Shayla explained all about how if there was bone loss then I might actually become her case study and then I’d have to come back a few more times. She then explained that she needed a case study to graduate and asked if I would mind being her case study if it turned out I had bone loss. Do you want me to be your case study? I asked. Oh, I would love it! she said, completely thrilled, and so I agreed, despite realizing that a part of her wanted something terrible to show up in the x-rays.
At some point I exclaimed, My teeth are a mess! I’m the worst patient you’ve ever seen. Oh no, she said. There was this woman, she was like 25, and she already had mobility. (Mobility means loose teeth.) Really? I said, not bothering to disguise my excitement. Yeah, she said. She had celiac disease and I guess her diet was really bad for her teeth. Her gums would not stop bleeding. She never came back again, she added wistfully. Yeah, but, okay, I said, tell me about someone that had bad teeth that didn’t have celiac disease. Oh there was this guy, she began. He never brushed his teeth….
At this point two hours had gone by.
What with all the picking and numbering of teeth and scheduling the afternoon x-rays there hadn’t even been time for a cleaning and so I had to schedule one for the following week, even though Shayla explained again (a little too excitedly) that if I were her case study, it would mean coming back a few more times after that. Fine. Now it was time to leave and come back to the afternoon clinic.
[Insert scene in which I spend the next hour and a half at Target happily trying on boots and sampling dozens of moisturizers.]
Back at the dental clinic, for my x-rays, I had another student, Caitlin, who was less ridiculously wholesome (when I’d asked Shayla if she liked that crap radio station they had playing in the office, she mentioned that once a song had come on that almost had a swear word in it and she was amazed because elderly people come in there!) and also less of a doomsayer (Caitlin: “I’m not a doctor, so I can’t really make a diagnosis, but your teeth look fine!”). I went into the x-ray cubicle and got into the dentist’s chair. They were just trying out the new digital x-ray machine in the office and though it was flattering to hear the supervising dentist say constantly, Wow, that’s gorgeous! about pictures of my teeth, it also took over an hour to get them all done. Caitlin had to set up each shot and then get each picture approved by her instructor, an actual dentist. Digital x-rays still involve that terrible contraption that they put in your mouth, but the results pop up seconds later on the computer screen in front of you, which is a little bit thrilling. The shots of my teeth were discussed and admired for their density.
After all of that, it turned out that I had minimal bone loss, which wasn’t terrible, and I was told that Shayla would explain all of that to me at my next visit. Except someone’s going to have to break it to her that I won’t be her case study. Maybe that girl with celiac disease will return or the guy who never brushed his teeth? I'm sure there must be someone out there with bad teeth and a spare couple of weeks that will help Shayla graduate. One can only hope.
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Actual Jobs I Have Had in No Particular Order, Part I
Times Books. Or more specifically, assisting the puzzle editor at Times Books, whose job pretty much involved reprinting the New York Times puzzles in book form. Ah, the good old days of publishing! My job involved occasionally typing a letter or mailing something, but mostly it involved me sitting around doing crossword puzzles. Once I talked to Puzzlemaster Will Shortz on the phone. He sounded, at best, slightly irritated.
David’s Cookies. First off, you take a job in a cookie store thinking you’ll get sick of cookies. Maybe eventually you would have, but not over the six months in high school working there. Now the store was in a rather strange location (42nd Street and 5th Avenue) and this was also a strange time in our nation’s history, involving a craze known as Cabbage Patch Dolls. Around the corner from the store there was at that time a Cabbage Patch Doll Hospital and the folks that worked there, dressed up as doctors and nurses, used to come into our store all the time for milkshakes. I will never forget these brave workers.
Macmillan. This was one of those one-day temp jobs in which I worked as a receptionist. Although even that does not quite capture the actual improbability of this "job." What happened was I sat at a desk in the center of the floor. On either side of me was a door. My job, for which I was actually paid, was to buzz people in to either door when they got off the elevator. I’d like to think that I answered the phone too occasionally, but I really don’t think I did.
The Leonard Lopate Show. There’s plenty I could say about working on the show as an assistant producer, and sometime soon I just might, but I think perhaps my fondest memory is of director Pedro Almodovar staring directly at my boobs and being literally unable to take his eyes off them while talking to me.
La Cage Aux Folles. One summer during college I worked in the costume shop on a summer stock production of this show in Pennsylvania. The show starred old-time comedian Shelly Berman, who was a total jerk, but once laughed hysterically at something I said. Here is where I learned to iron properly as one of my jobs was to iron 22 men’s shirts every single day and my other job consisted of dressing and undressing men in dresses and high heels. I also hand sewed part of a costume for Bonnie Franklin, who was starring in a subsequent show, and who I never met, but who apparently had an attitude problem. This is it.
B. Dalton’s. This store, now a Barnes and Noble, was where I worked every summer when I was home from college. It was on the corner of 8th Street and 6th Avenue, and thus pretty much in the middle of where I wanted to be all the time. It’s true that my book collection is a bit larger as a result of working there, but I should add that all of the books were very much loved.
There's more, of course. Isn't there always? Stay tuned.
David’s Cookies. First off, you take a job in a cookie store thinking you’ll get sick of cookies. Maybe eventually you would have, but not over the six months in high school working there. Now the store was in a rather strange location (42nd Street and 5th Avenue) and this was also a strange time in our nation’s history, involving a craze known as Cabbage Patch Dolls. Around the corner from the store there was at that time a Cabbage Patch Doll Hospital and the folks that worked there, dressed up as doctors and nurses, used to come into our store all the time for milkshakes. I will never forget these brave workers.
Macmillan. This was one of those one-day temp jobs in which I worked as a receptionist. Although even that does not quite capture the actual improbability of this "job." What happened was I sat at a desk in the center of the floor. On either side of me was a door. My job, for which I was actually paid, was to buzz people in to either door when they got off the elevator. I’d like to think that I answered the phone too occasionally, but I really don’t think I did.
The Leonard Lopate Show. There’s plenty I could say about working on the show as an assistant producer, and sometime soon I just might, but I think perhaps my fondest memory is of director Pedro Almodovar staring directly at my boobs and being literally unable to take his eyes off them while talking to me.
La Cage Aux Folles. One summer during college I worked in the costume shop on a summer stock production of this show in Pennsylvania. The show starred old-time comedian Shelly Berman, who was a total jerk, but once laughed hysterically at something I said. Here is where I learned to iron properly as one of my jobs was to iron 22 men’s shirts every single day and my other job consisted of dressing and undressing men in dresses and high heels. I also hand sewed part of a costume for Bonnie Franklin, who was starring in a subsequent show, and who I never met, but who apparently had an attitude problem. This is it.
B. Dalton’s. This store, now a Barnes and Noble, was where I worked every summer when I was home from college. It was on the corner of 8th Street and 6th Avenue, and thus pretty much in the middle of where I wanted to be all the time. It’s true that my book collection is a bit larger as a result of working there, but I should add that all of the books were very much loved.
There's more, of course. Isn't there always? Stay tuned.
Monday, November 21, 2011
Scoring Superpowers
So here I am, once again scoring those state essay tests, this time written by fifth graders. After weeks and weeks of reading about the difference between clothes in 1899 and clothes today (apparently: skinny jeans) we finally came to the question that I had been waiting for seemingly forever: “What superpower would you like to have? Write a paragraph that describes how you would use that superpower to do good.”
Well! If you know me at all, you know that this is the type of thing I could talk about forever and to be honest I did spend quite a bit of time doing just that with the two guys sitting next to me. For days and days we considered the possibilities. Now as I see it, the only superpowers worth considering are flying and invisibility. And to be honest, I’m not even sure what’s so great about flying really, but there are those (like my younger daughter) who would choose this above all else. As for me, all I ever wanted was to see and hear things I was not supposed to see and hear, though I discovered recently when talking it through that this also meant I wanted to take things I wasn’t supposed to take. I was reminded that I had to do good with my superpower. This stopped me right in my tracks.
But here’s the thing: There are many kids who also seem flummoxed by the fact that they have to do good with their superpower and they end up getting derailed, such as the kid who wanted arms that shot fire so he could…put fire in fireplaces so people wouldn’t have to buy matches and fire lighters. Uh huh. Or the kids whose aspirations weren’t so high (“I would press a button on myself and a jet pack and a shopping cart would come out. I would go to the store a lot faster. Then I would be done shopping a lot faster.”) or didn’t really want superpowers so much as moderate assistance: night vision, keen hearing, the power to learn.
Many of the kids write about using their superpowers to stop bank robberies, but somehow they all conjure up images of early-twentieth-century bank robberies what with the black robber masks and the old fashioned stick-em-up talk (“There has been a hold up! one man shouted as he ran down the frost covered street.”). Which is pretty much the way we all think about bank robberies, I suppose, unless of course you think of this.
I spent most of the day struggling with the illogical responses of these fifth graders (Wait, he wants to be invisible so he can hold doors open for people? Can’t he just do that anyway??), but occasionally being impressed by their altruism, such as saving extinct animals by turning into an extinct animal and fighting off hunters (Um, wait, couldn’t he get shot too?), or their extremely high aspirations (wanting to be able to go back in time to both stop the attack on the Twin Towers and flirt with the Hannaford’s cashier over and over again).
Unfortunately, having watched way too much science fiction (so?), I am always looking for the catch, the way that the superpower attempt to do good would end up backfiring and causing worse problems (such as interfering with the prime directive, or, um, something like that). What if by trying to stop animals from going extinct you end up causing an overpopulation with devastating results? What if when trying to control the weather, you cause a terrible drought when you simply wish for more sunny days? What if the Hannaford’s cashier just never gets to go home?
It must be the fact that you have to do good with your superpower that is throwing everybody off, right? I mean, of course I would do plenty of good if I were invisible! Just after I was done seeing and hearing and taking things I shouldn't be seeing and hearing and taking. Perhaps if the kids were told they could use their powers for evil, the essays would have been better written?
Well! If you know me at all, you know that this is the type of thing I could talk about forever and to be honest I did spend quite a bit of time doing just that with the two guys sitting next to me. For days and days we considered the possibilities. Now as I see it, the only superpowers worth considering are flying and invisibility. And to be honest, I’m not even sure what’s so great about flying really, but there are those (like my younger daughter) who would choose this above all else. As for me, all I ever wanted was to see and hear things I was not supposed to see and hear, though I discovered recently when talking it through that this also meant I wanted to take things I wasn’t supposed to take. I was reminded that I had to do good with my superpower. This stopped me right in my tracks.
But here’s the thing: There are many kids who also seem flummoxed by the fact that they have to do good with their superpower and they end up getting derailed, such as the kid who wanted arms that shot fire so he could…put fire in fireplaces so people wouldn’t have to buy matches and fire lighters. Uh huh. Or the kids whose aspirations weren’t so high (“I would press a button on myself and a jet pack and a shopping cart would come out. I would go to the store a lot faster. Then I would be done shopping a lot faster.”) or didn’t really want superpowers so much as moderate assistance: night vision, keen hearing, the power to learn.
Many of the kids write about using their superpowers to stop bank robberies, but somehow they all conjure up images of early-twentieth-century bank robberies what with the black robber masks and the old fashioned stick-em-up talk (“There has been a hold up! one man shouted as he ran down the frost covered street.”). Which is pretty much the way we all think about bank robberies, I suppose, unless of course you think of this.
I spent most of the day struggling with the illogical responses of these fifth graders (Wait, he wants to be invisible so he can hold doors open for people? Can’t he just do that anyway??), but occasionally being impressed by their altruism, such as saving extinct animals by turning into an extinct animal and fighting off hunters (Um, wait, couldn’t he get shot too?), or their extremely high aspirations (wanting to be able to go back in time to both stop the attack on the Twin Towers and flirt with the Hannaford’s cashier over and over again).
Unfortunately, having watched way too much science fiction (so?), I am always looking for the catch, the way that the superpower attempt to do good would end up backfiring and causing worse problems (such as interfering with the prime directive, or, um, something like that). What if by trying to stop animals from going extinct you end up causing an overpopulation with devastating results? What if when trying to control the weather, you cause a terrible drought when you simply wish for more sunny days? What if the Hannaford’s cashier just never gets to go home?
It must be the fact that you have to do good with your superpower that is throwing everybody off, right? I mean, of course I would do plenty of good if I were invisible! Just after I was done seeing and hearing and taking things I shouldn't be seeing and hearing and taking. Perhaps if the kids were told they could use their powers for evil, the essays would have been better written?
Saturday, October 29, 2011
(Not) Reading Cookbooks
My earliest memory of my aunt is of her melting sugar on the stove in my grandparents’ old summer farmhouse in western New York. I was probably around four years old and it seemed to me that what she was doing was a little bit magical. But actually this was something kind of ordinary in that house, what with my French grandmother pretty much constantly whipping up Hollandaise sauce or ratatouille or something else that would take hours to prepare and minutes to wolf down. There was hardly a moment when someone wasn’t cooking something and this is still true of my aunt today, who I can only picture in the various kitchens I have seen her in, including her own.
Were cookbooks used? Very likely, but I hardly remember anyone looking at one. Somehow my grandmother always seemed to know how many eggs went into a soufflé and when precisely it needed to be taken out of the oven. Which is why I have always had a kind of wary relationship with cookbooks. I love reading them, don’t get me wrong. And how else are you going to make anything that you don’t already know how to make? It’s just that I hate having to cook while constantly reading and referring back to something. (This is strangely the opposite of how I am in my non-cooking life, in which I try to read while doing other things, such as walking down the street.) I think it’s the fact that I am so easily distracted while cooking that reading a recipe ends up distracting me further, if that makes sense. And then there’s also the very worst word you can encounter in a recipe. That word is meanwhile. There you are, following along, and suddenly you read: “Meanwhile, shuck 60 oysters” or “Meanwhile prepare the marinade and let it sit for two hours.” At that point, you realize that you have simply lost control of the whole procedure.
It would make sense, I suppose, to read an entire recipe before trying to make something new. I know there are people like that out there. Are these the same people who actually read all the directions before playing a new board game or trying to work a new digital camera? I think those might be the people that have what you might call patience. As for me, I might skim a recipe for cooking times, but sometimes the ingredient list is really all I get through before starting. But then once I have perfected something, all I eventually need to look at is the ingredient list, which is exactly my goal.
But the cookbooks themselves. Oh, I read these just like regular books: for the stories! The stories of how when you add balsamic vinegar to roasted fennel something amazing happens. Or how a triple mousse cake is supposed to come gorgeously together with just the tiniest bit of gelatin. Or how when you make David Chang’s ginger vinaigrette you will want to drink it straight up. Or how at the age of 8 someone’s French grandmother made her practice separating eggs until she got it just right (okay, this would actually be from my own personal cookbook, if such a thing were ever to be written).
I guess my point is that there is reading and there is cooking. And I love both. But, and this hardly makes any sense at all and yet I'm afraid it's true, not at the same time.
Were cookbooks used? Very likely, but I hardly remember anyone looking at one. Somehow my grandmother always seemed to know how many eggs went into a soufflé and when precisely it needed to be taken out of the oven. Which is why I have always had a kind of wary relationship with cookbooks. I love reading them, don’t get me wrong. And how else are you going to make anything that you don’t already know how to make? It’s just that I hate having to cook while constantly reading and referring back to something. (This is strangely the opposite of how I am in my non-cooking life, in which I try to read while doing other things, such as walking down the street.) I think it’s the fact that I am so easily distracted while cooking that reading a recipe ends up distracting me further, if that makes sense. And then there’s also the very worst word you can encounter in a recipe. That word is meanwhile. There you are, following along, and suddenly you read: “Meanwhile, shuck 60 oysters” or “Meanwhile prepare the marinade and let it sit for two hours.” At that point, you realize that you have simply lost control of the whole procedure.
It would make sense, I suppose, to read an entire recipe before trying to make something new. I know there are people like that out there. Are these the same people who actually read all the directions before playing a new board game or trying to work a new digital camera? I think those might be the people that have what you might call patience. As for me, I might skim a recipe for cooking times, but sometimes the ingredient list is really all I get through before starting. But then once I have perfected something, all I eventually need to look at is the ingredient list, which is exactly my goal.
But the cookbooks themselves. Oh, I read these just like regular books: for the stories! The stories of how when you add balsamic vinegar to roasted fennel something amazing happens. Or how a triple mousse cake is supposed to come gorgeously together with just the tiniest bit of gelatin. Or how when you make David Chang’s ginger vinaigrette you will want to drink it straight up. Or how at the age of 8 someone’s French grandmother made her practice separating eggs until she got it just right (okay, this would actually be from my own personal cookbook, if such a thing were ever to be written).
I guess my point is that there is reading and there is cooking. And I love both. But, and this hardly makes any sense at all and yet I'm afraid it's true, not at the same time.
Sunday, October 9, 2011
The Last House
I wrote this story at a temp job around 15 years ago. This is the best use of time at a temp job that I can think of.
Charming was the man, of course, I was just this guy who’d landed a pretty decent job at the palace, taking care of all the details, fulfilling his every whim, you can imagine, but for a while there, for a while, things were really happening. I have to say, the most exciting time of my life was that search, the search that took us all over the land, weeks it took, months, he was not going to give up, not ever.
Of course all he had to do was show up at these houses, just show up, and every woman in there, young and old alike, would swoon, literally swoon. The man had it going on, let me tell you. While I’d be there on my knees, trying to jam all manner of peasant feet into one tiny delicate slipper (made of glass! Glass! Do you know how hard it was keeping it in one piece just bouncing around on my horse?), Charming would be standing there, always so polite, graciously declining just about everything these women were offering him, even the poorest of them all, who you knew hadn’t even had a decent meal probably in weeks. The things they tried to give him! Blankets, ribbons, rusted silverware, even an old sickly goat at one place. This guy’s a prince, and still they all wanted him to take the very best object in the house, and I’m sure you can imagine that many times this would turn out to be one or more of the daughters of the house.
Man, there were some beauties to be seen on this journey, and, rich or poor, they’d always make some effort to be decked out in their best clothes, clean or not, once word had spread that the prince was searching the land for the perfect one he’d met at the ball, the one who hadn’t left her name (more work for me, of course). Anyway, some of the offers these girls made him—or worse, the girls’ mothers!—well, just don’t get me started! Now of course, I wouldn’t have minded taking his place in any of those activities—you know how they’ll sometimes have some poor unlucky bastard stand in for a prince if he has to fight or something?—but do you think he ever offered me the chance? Not even once. As for the women, do you think they even saw me with a prince in the room? No, I was just the one they’d glance at briefly as I knelt at their feet, before they’d turn their gaze right back to the man, who’d just be beaming at them royally.
Now let me tell you about their feet.
A lot of the poorer women never even wore shoes, of course, but just the same they had to be trying on that precious slipper like everyone else. The soles of their feet were always rough and dirty, but there was an incredible strength there too, in the veins that pulsed across the skin, in those terrible, magnificent calluses. Usually, lost in their own reveries, they wouldn’t even notice as my hands ran along the length of their arches, slowly, taking advantage of that moment, feeling all the work they’d ever done in their lives. On one occasion, a woman actually gasped and for a brief second I caught her eye. My hands began to shake. She looked as though she wanted to smack me, or possibly, make love to me, it was hard to tell. I had to look away. Soon it was over.
The rich women were different. Their feet, though not as strong by any means, were certainly clean and quite delicate; sometimes their toenails were painted, some even wore tiny rings on their toes. That was something to see. The initial look on their faces was always the same: hopeful, always hopeful, as though I could work some kind of magic, as though it were up to me to come up with the perfect fit. Then their attention would snap right back to your man, who was always, of course, all smiles. So I took a few chances with these women too. Sometimes my hand, resting on an ankle, would slide a little upwards, nearly approaching the full-length skirt that they had so boldly lifted up to me just seconds earlier. That feeling was electric, it was indescribable, and sometimes I was afraid that I might gasp aloud just like that young peasant woman had done, though I must say the brief looks I got from some of these women were not nearly so kind. And they too made me look away.
But, as in every case, soon would come the inevitable sobbing, the pleading, and Charming would have to apologize once again, profusely and ever so sadly, and we’d be out the door as fast as we could. Weeks of this really did him in.
There was one night where, thoroughly exhausted as well as disappointed, he turned to me and said in the saddest voice you ever heard, “I shall never find her! This has all been in vain! Let us return home now.” So of course I took pity on him, anyone would have. As much as I wouldn’t admit it at the time, the thrill of it all was completely addictive; I never wanted it to stop. And I told him there was just one house left in the area. Just one left. We ought to stop by there, I said, have a meal perhaps (it looked like there might be food there), maybe rest for the night, and in the morning return home. He nodded solemnly, in that way he has, not saying a word. I guess you know whose house this one was. I led him there myself. I led him, and so ended the search forever, and my one true adventure.
Every so often I find myself thinking about what might have happened had we not gone into that last house. Would we still be riding all over the lands searching out every home for every woman living within? Would one day one of them, perhaps in an unguarded moment, have turned away from our hero and glanced back at me, and there, in my face, noticed what would have been a perfect fit? And there would I have found the wife that has long been denied me?
Fortunately there is a lot at the palace that keeps me busy these days, and I don’t have much time to think about anything except the happy couple’s happiness. Who knows if their life is as blissful as they hoped? They seem pretty content, they have a lot of time to themselves to do whatever it is they do. This might be the secret, you know, but who except a royal family can afford such luxury? As for me, what I have are the memories of a time when anything seemed possible, when the future seemed wide open, and the tedium had all but lifted from my life for good.
So the last house. Do you want to know about the house? It was a simple cottage, clean and well-kept. The door had a knocker on it; in fact, it was the nicest thing about the place, intricately carved, old but still functional. We stood there and waited, me balancing the delicate weight in one hand, reaching up to the door with the other. The prince, he just simply stood, an almost beaten man, hands at his sides. I had to knock three times before someone came to the door.
Charming was the man, of course, I was just this guy who’d landed a pretty decent job at the palace, taking care of all the details, fulfilling his every whim, you can imagine, but for a while there, for a while, things were really happening. I have to say, the most exciting time of my life was that search, the search that took us all over the land, weeks it took, months, he was not going to give up, not ever.
Of course all he had to do was show up at these houses, just show up, and every woman in there, young and old alike, would swoon, literally swoon. The man had it going on, let me tell you. While I’d be there on my knees, trying to jam all manner of peasant feet into one tiny delicate slipper (made of glass! Glass! Do you know how hard it was keeping it in one piece just bouncing around on my horse?), Charming would be standing there, always so polite, graciously declining just about everything these women were offering him, even the poorest of them all, who you knew hadn’t even had a decent meal probably in weeks. The things they tried to give him! Blankets, ribbons, rusted silverware, even an old sickly goat at one place. This guy’s a prince, and still they all wanted him to take the very best object in the house, and I’m sure you can imagine that many times this would turn out to be one or more of the daughters of the house.
Man, there were some beauties to be seen on this journey, and, rich or poor, they’d always make some effort to be decked out in their best clothes, clean or not, once word had spread that the prince was searching the land for the perfect one he’d met at the ball, the one who hadn’t left her name (more work for me, of course). Anyway, some of the offers these girls made him—or worse, the girls’ mothers!—well, just don’t get me started! Now of course, I wouldn’t have minded taking his place in any of those activities—you know how they’ll sometimes have some poor unlucky bastard stand in for a prince if he has to fight or something?—but do you think he ever offered me the chance? Not even once. As for the women, do you think they even saw me with a prince in the room? No, I was just the one they’d glance at briefly as I knelt at their feet, before they’d turn their gaze right back to the man, who’d just be beaming at them royally.
Now let me tell you about their feet.
A lot of the poorer women never even wore shoes, of course, but just the same they had to be trying on that precious slipper like everyone else. The soles of their feet were always rough and dirty, but there was an incredible strength there too, in the veins that pulsed across the skin, in those terrible, magnificent calluses. Usually, lost in their own reveries, they wouldn’t even notice as my hands ran along the length of their arches, slowly, taking advantage of that moment, feeling all the work they’d ever done in their lives. On one occasion, a woman actually gasped and for a brief second I caught her eye. My hands began to shake. She looked as though she wanted to smack me, or possibly, make love to me, it was hard to tell. I had to look away. Soon it was over.
The rich women were different. Their feet, though not as strong by any means, were certainly clean and quite delicate; sometimes their toenails were painted, some even wore tiny rings on their toes. That was something to see. The initial look on their faces was always the same: hopeful, always hopeful, as though I could work some kind of magic, as though it were up to me to come up with the perfect fit. Then their attention would snap right back to your man, who was always, of course, all smiles. So I took a few chances with these women too. Sometimes my hand, resting on an ankle, would slide a little upwards, nearly approaching the full-length skirt that they had so boldly lifted up to me just seconds earlier. That feeling was electric, it was indescribable, and sometimes I was afraid that I might gasp aloud just like that young peasant woman had done, though I must say the brief looks I got from some of these women were not nearly so kind. And they too made me look away.
But, as in every case, soon would come the inevitable sobbing, the pleading, and Charming would have to apologize once again, profusely and ever so sadly, and we’d be out the door as fast as we could. Weeks of this really did him in.
There was one night where, thoroughly exhausted as well as disappointed, he turned to me and said in the saddest voice you ever heard, “I shall never find her! This has all been in vain! Let us return home now.” So of course I took pity on him, anyone would have. As much as I wouldn’t admit it at the time, the thrill of it all was completely addictive; I never wanted it to stop. And I told him there was just one house left in the area. Just one left. We ought to stop by there, I said, have a meal perhaps (it looked like there might be food there), maybe rest for the night, and in the morning return home. He nodded solemnly, in that way he has, not saying a word. I guess you know whose house this one was. I led him there myself. I led him, and so ended the search forever, and my one true adventure.
Every so often I find myself thinking about what might have happened had we not gone into that last house. Would we still be riding all over the lands searching out every home for every woman living within? Would one day one of them, perhaps in an unguarded moment, have turned away from our hero and glanced back at me, and there, in my face, noticed what would have been a perfect fit? And there would I have found the wife that has long been denied me?
Fortunately there is a lot at the palace that keeps me busy these days, and I don’t have much time to think about anything except the happy couple’s happiness. Who knows if their life is as blissful as they hoped? They seem pretty content, they have a lot of time to themselves to do whatever it is they do. This might be the secret, you know, but who except a royal family can afford such luxury? As for me, what I have are the memories of a time when anything seemed possible, when the future seemed wide open, and the tedium had all but lifted from my life for good.
So the last house. Do you want to know about the house? It was a simple cottage, clean and well-kept. The door had a knocker on it; in fact, it was the nicest thing about the place, intricately carved, old but still functional. We stood there and waited, me balancing the delicate weight in one hand, reaching up to the door with the other. The prince, he just simply stood, an almost beaten man, hands at his sides. I had to knock three times before someone came to the door.
Monday, September 26, 2011
Well, How Did I Get Here?
Today I received an award for this blog here, or really what I should call an appreciation, from my friend Hope, whose blog, Unmapped Country, is always worth reading.
And the award comes with some rules, which is to thank the person who gave you the award and link back to them in your post (see above), to share 7 things about yourself (an excuse for another list!), and to pass this award along to 15 recently discovered blogs and let them know about it.
So now, 7 things about me:
1. I am really good at ironing shirts, but I hate to do it.
2. I am 5’6 ½” but I pretend I’m 5’7”.
3. When I was a kid, I once rode on the shoulders of a clown while he was riding a unicycle. Clowns don't scare me.
4. This.
5. I have a literary crush on J.D. Salinger, which is almost too obvious to mention.
6. I wish I could draw well, but really I'm terrible at it.
7. One time (maybe 15 years ago) I bought a falafel at a cart somewhere around 23rd Street in Manhattan. What do you want on it? Everything? the guy asked me. Sure, I answered. Now I have no idea what “everything” was, exactly, but to this day, I have not stopped thinking about the most perfect falafel of my life.
As for fifteen blogs to recommend, well. I must always give props to the wonderful Li'l Blog of Lists, which includes my favorite list of all time, plus a list I once wrote myself and was generously allowed to post there. And if you're a fan of SZ, as you should be, you might also greatly appreciate Vegetarian Astoria, which will not cover the neighborhood schwarma scene, but will, I am told, feature falafels at some point. (Sooz, do not forget the loukoumades at Telly's Taverna, which they might still give you for free on weeknights!)
And then there's also the fabulous Catherine Newman, whose writing I have admired for years and years and who I once had the pleasure of meeting in Cape Cod, of all places, and who shares with me a great appreciation for this commercial, which, if you also were living in NYC in the late 1970s, needs no explanation.
But I think all the rest of the blogs I read are probably ones that you already know about or that someone is always sending you links from or something so I won't list them here. And I'll probably be back again soon writing about something that I'm reading or that I read a while ago or something that has nothing to do with reading at all. And I'll get in some Salinger too. I mean, it was his own character Buddy Glass who said: "I don't really deeply feel that anyone needs an airtight reason for quoting from the works of writers he loves, but it's always nice, I'll grant you, if he has one."
And the award comes with some rules, which is to thank the person who gave you the award and link back to them in your post (see above), to share 7 things about yourself (an excuse for another list!), and to pass this award along to 15 recently discovered blogs and let them know about it.
So now, 7 things about me:
1. I am really good at ironing shirts, but I hate to do it.
2. I am 5’6 ½” but I pretend I’m 5’7”.
3. When I was a kid, I once rode on the shoulders of a clown while he was riding a unicycle. Clowns don't scare me.
4. This.
5. I have a literary crush on J.D. Salinger, which is almost too obvious to mention.
6. I wish I could draw well, but really I'm terrible at it.
7. One time (maybe 15 years ago) I bought a falafel at a cart somewhere around 23rd Street in Manhattan. What do you want on it? Everything? the guy asked me. Sure, I answered. Now I have no idea what “everything” was, exactly, but to this day, I have not stopped thinking about the most perfect falafel of my life.
As for fifteen blogs to recommend, well. I must always give props to the wonderful Li'l Blog of Lists, which includes my favorite list of all time, plus a list I once wrote myself and was generously allowed to post there. And if you're a fan of SZ, as you should be, you might also greatly appreciate Vegetarian Astoria, which will not cover the neighborhood schwarma scene, but will, I am told, feature falafels at some point. (Sooz, do not forget the loukoumades at Telly's Taverna, which they might still give you for free on weeknights!)
And then there's also the fabulous Catherine Newman, whose writing I have admired for years and years and who I once had the pleasure of meeting in Cape Cod, of all places, and who shares with me a great appreciation for this commercial, which, if you also were living in NYC in the late 1970s, needs no explanation.
But I think all the rest of the blogs I read are probably ones that you already know about or that someone is always sending you links from or something so I won't list them here. And I'll probably be back again soon writing about something that I'm reading or that I read a while ago or something that has nothing to do with reading at all. And I'll get in some Salinger too. I mean, it was his own character Buddy Glass who said: "I don't really deeply feel that anyone needs an airtight reason for quoting from the works of writers he loves, but it's always nice, I'll grant you, if he has one."
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