New Jersey is a hell for people exactly as overweight as me. But on the train yesterday the person sitting next to me was for once actually less overweight. It was good, there was room enough for both of us to work on laptops without elbow spear.
People being people the conversation turned to Microsoft Excel and she missed her stop, Newark Airport. The train was an express and stopped next at New Brunswick, the central Jersey equivalent of a million light years away if you're late for a flight at rush hour, separating you from your goal are an obstacle course of little fiefdom moron towns, each with its own dimwitted love for stoplights, poorly designed over-saturated roadways, crazy people intentionally crashing their cars to add spice to their days. The community rallied, each of us too familiar with the eerie impossibility of swift passage through short distances quickly in this area, each eager to help his fellow traveler transcend the shit moorings.
We took on tactical responsibilities, tracked the flight status (sadly: on time), coached her on a return route to Newark (train or taxi?), and reasoned that central Jersey in the pissy cold rain was (depending on your point of view) just as good as spring break Florida, not worse, just different. The flight being delayed was the only reasonable hope.
The way she missed her stop was: she was trying to figure out how to move a worksheet from one workbook to another on a Mac. Anyone worth their salt could do that on a PC, but Mac mice lack a right click, which somehow makes them more complicated, which takes artsy people and makes it impossible for them to do math, which encourages a whole mediocre patch of right-brained art and music uninformed by specificity or science. So first it had to be googled how the fuck you right-click on a Mac (option-click-let go of the click, which I never remember). Then it had to be tried, then eureka, worksheets came unmoored from their shells as the door chimed closed and the train jumped forward with grim determination and the conductor leapt out for after-the-fact non-helpfulness.
When I got to Hamilton the weather was shit, scary to drive in perfect storm style. Fog plus rain plus Newark, there's no way that thing went out on time.
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
