I Can So Relate

We buy the New Yorker about once a month, and my friend, Shawn, emails me NYer articles that she's read and thinks I'd like. I generally like the Shouts & Murmurs column, but it's a rare occasion that I reread the column or read it out loud to someone. The April 30th installment by Paul Simms, entitled "Four Short Crushes," resonated with and tickled me to just such an extent. Almost a month after I've read it, I'm still sharing it with people.

I readily admit that I often create scenarios about strangers while I'm killing time queuing or waiting for friends. Perhaps I should be contemplating current events, the performance of my investments or the direction of my career path, but it's much more natural for me to imagine the life of the person ahead of me in the post office line. A white haired, woman sending a package to Canada? She's native English but her daughter has married a Canadian, and the grandmotherly figure in front of me is sending off baby clothes for her newborn grandson and two year old granddaughter. She seems happy to be sending the package, so she must see them regularly. I decide twice a year—one visit in Canada and one in the UK.

I identified strongly with the 'Starbucks crush', for another reason as well: my frustration with people who make no attempt to get out their money (cash, credit, debit, or, deep breath, check) when they have ample time to do so and who take forever to put away their change and gather their bags, meanwhile blocking the progression of the queue. The entire column is worth a read, but the bit below is a gem.

"So silly does my impatience now seem, stuck as I am in the Starbucks line during the morning rush. But that was before I noticed you in line ahead of me.

And now that I’ve seen you—with your gossamer hair still damp from the shower, with your well-moisturized ankles strapped and buckled into high heels that make you wobble and sway like a young colt just finding her stride, with your scent of lilacs and Dial, and, most of all, with your infectious sense of calmness and serenity, which makes me wish that the world itself would stop spinning, so that gravity would cease and we two could float into the sky and kiss in the clouds, giddy with love and vertigo—

Now you’re at the register, and the dreaded moment when we part without meeting rushes toward me like a slow-motion car crash in a dream.

You’ve been at the register without saying anything for, like, fifteen seconds now, still scanning the menu board with those almond-shaped eyes that would make Nefertiti herself weep with envy.

Seriously, you’ve been to a Starbucks before, right? I mean, it seems like there are a lot of choices, but most people find a drink they like and stick with it. And order it quickly.

But maybe I’ve caught you on a day when you’ve decided to make a fresh start. To make a fresh start, to try a new drink, to walk a different way to work, to finally dump that boyfriend who doesn’t appreciate you.

O.K., even if that were the case you could have picked out your new drink while you were waiting in line, right? I mean, come on.

Well, you’ve won me back, my future Mrs. Me—by turning to me and mouthing, “Sorry,” after you finally noticed me tapping my foot, looking at my watch, and exhaling loudly. Sensitivity like that can be neither learned nor taught, and it’s a rare thing indeed. The rarest of all possible—

Jesus Christ, you’ve ordered your drink and paid; do I really have to stand here for another forty-five seconds while you repack your purse, the contents of which you’ve spilled out on the counter like you’re setting up a fucking yard sale or something?

That’s right, the bills go in the billfold, the coins go in the little coin purse, the billfold and the coin purse go back in the pocketbook—no, in a side pocket of the pocketbook, which seems to have a clasp whose design incorporates some proprietary technology that you haven’t yet mastered.

I think I hate you now.

(Duration of crush: five minutes.)"