Seeing/Being

I don't know how I feel about the fact that I've become accustomed to seeing cops everywhere I go, every day.

Earlier today, at the Times Square station, I saw a young uniform pounce toward this tiny elfin woman, demanding "Let me -- what do you -- let me see that" and stopping about a foot from her, near the top of the staircase down to the tracks. By then, she had pulled her golden-orange Metrocard back out from her pocket.

A cardboard box with a plastic "I Heart NY" bag wrapped around it becomes an imitation bomb when it is sailed up a tree in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and the boys in blue swarm, seeing fear and terror everywhere, being fear and terror everywhere. A woman on a bicycle at a bicycle event is arrested for wearing a cop costume--er, impersonating a police officer.

Have they taken leave of their minds in New York and the East Coast in general and Texas in general and the country in general? At the low end of this spectrum is the tasering of pregnant women, sidebarred by comments on stories about this, comments celebrating, comments false equivocating. What year is this, why why why must the mainstream overarching infatuation be with the 1950s not, say, the 1970s--or even the 1990s?

Sheesh, pass the beer.

Instead It's the Shocked Look

You know what's annoying?

When you open the door for the Fed Ex guy and, sans any greeting, he immediately shoves the hard signature pad at you -- no, not at you: at your breasts. And as he ogles your breasts from three feet away, despite nearly injuring them, geez, he keeps moving the signature pad around as you're trying to sign because he's in such a rush he won't let go of it, and is busy ogling. And of course your signature doesn't come out clearly; half your energy is concentrated on preventing him from ramming the signature pad into your breasts, which you know would prompt you to whack him with it, only to be vilified as some "crazy woman."

"Honey," you say instead, "you have to stop moving this thing around for me to sign it clearly." As you are signing the signature pad for the second time, you're about halfway through a signature you can actually read when he starts to grab it away again. "I can't sign this when you move it. And it's a little annoying." By then, though, grabby has taken back full possession of the signature pad and is looking all shocked that you've dared comment, whereas you might be wondering where the apology for almost bashing your breasts repeatedly while leering at them is, but instead it's the shocked look of who does she think she is, a person?, and there's nothing to do but slam the door on t-shirt & shorts ensemble in 56 degree weather as he scampers down the stairs.