"A Capital Idea" does not refer to DC

As I was sandwiched on the Red Line train yesterday morning, I wondered, “When did we become so important?” By we, I mean the inflamed sense of human importance bestowed upon employed people. I understand that Whitman writes and (and I’m not sure if I’ve already paraphrased it poorly in this blog or not), that we are here, and life exists. The powerful play goes on, and we will contribute a verse. Yet, when did our verses become more jangly and abrasive than an e.e. cummings line? Our verses have superseded the importance of our colleagues because we all have the same goal for our Act V: making it. 

Supposedly, Washington DC is the city for us to make it. On paper, it’s true. Then again, on paper, Communism and my college boyfriend should have worked, and I’ve already broken up with one of those.  The DMV (not the hellish department of motor vehicles, as the rest of the world calls it, but the DC, Maryland, and Virginia metropolitan areas) has some of the lowest unemployment rates in the country. Jobs for the most part, abound here. This is why government and politics majors from small liberal arts colleges around the country flock here like it’s mecca. Parents chide them to get off the couches from home, quit their jobs selling knives door to door (after all, their parents may have paid 100k+ to get their kids an education, only to have this tragic economy give them the opportunity to make them cut through sheetrock at living room demonstrations) and move to DC because it will save them. And perhaps, for the time being, it will.

I’m blessed to have a fantastic job where I fundamentally believe I make a difference. I work with large clients and government agencies, sometimes from the comfort of my pajamas on my bed at home.  Yet, it is days where I go on-site for a client that make me remember just how much of a carwreck driven people become, even if they’re taking the metro.

I like to leave myself some extra time in the morning, to prepare for the inevitable. A missed stoplight, a turtle crossing, a sexy hitchhiker, whatever. Being late makes me more anxious than Michelle Bachman trying to remember her family history.  Literally still in my neighborhood, I had to make a left turn since my street is too narrow for me to turn around in. Those who have experienced the joys of the highly sought after Highland View neighborhood know what turn I’m talking about. Anyways, since I don’t have a stop sign, I just turned right. Which is funny because the guy who did have the stop sign must have been so motivated by my attitude that he just went too—almost into the side of my car! This happened yesterday too, and I realized that we both timed our advents at the corner of Lauer and Oldham so well, it must be beshert. Idiot drivers happen every day in Maryland, but this same guy, two days in a row after almost hitting me, didn’t learn his lesson. And that’s when I realized—he is so focused on making it that he doesn’t worry how he’ll get there (perhaps by sending someone to the ER) as long as he gets there.

On the metro yesterday morning, I had to switch to the Blorange line to get to Capital South. As I disembarked from my warm cocoon of the red, I was pushed by a woman who just had to make the next Orange train. At this point, I was so ticked that my 65% complete Express crossword fell to the ground from her shove that I even yelled “There’s another train in three goddamn minutes!” I don’t think she heard but I got a “mmmHmmmm!” from the woman behind me. I don’t even know how to type what she said but take it as a large woman’s approval.

I expect that we all sacrifice for our careers but I’m seeing the cost as too high. When we forget human decency and how to delegate right of way at intersections, it’s gone too far.  We may all think we’re important because we work with Federal agencies, high powered lobbyists, lawyers, non-profits and sports teams (yeah, I’m pretty much just outing all of my friends), but don’t forget you’re a human first. Our jobs are important but not at the cost of knocking others, and their crosswords, over, in selfish pursuit of an unobtainable goal to make it. 

When I think about myself, I click myself.

It might be taboo. I heard that if you do it too often, you might go blind. Sometimes, we don’t go to sleep because we’re too busy doing it. You don’t like to do it in front of other people because it’s all about you. Your private time where you get to experience how much you like yourself. It’s satisfying. It’s pleasurable. It’s awkward when you get caught. It’s embarrassing but everyone does it. I actually do it every day at work. Sometimes a couple of times when I get home. It feels good. No, I’m not talking about masturbation. I’m talking about searching for yourself online.

Penny is famous on ShitMyPetsRuined.com

We’re all guilty. I even once was a member of a group on Facebook entitled “Uh oh, I think I’m stalking myself”. We are all fabulous people who want to feel better about themselves to see how popular we are on the Internet. On a recent Google search for myself, I’ve found various articles I’ve been featured in, my slow road race times, some shout-outs to me in synagogue bulletins and those creepy people search sites that tell me where I’ve lived and how old my sisters are. 

I like finding out what other Sharon Rosenblatts are up to. It seems a lot of us have typically taught Hebrew school somewhere. I even found an obituary for a Sharon Rosenblatt. It’s chilling, really. It also sucks when other Sharon Rosenblatts are cooler than your or prettier than you. Yeah, there is a cuter Sharon Rosenblatt if you Google image search my name. Fuck her.

Truthfully, the search is bigger than self-glorification. We also want to guard what people find out about us before they actually meet us. Admit it, how many times have you agreed to go on a date with someone and Googled them first? See if they have a Facebook profile and judge them if they are with bikini babes or have a douchebag muscle shot as a picture? Maybe make sure they’re employed by looking for them on LinkedIn? It’s human nature. I even went on a date with a guy who extensively read my LinkedIn and admitted it on the first date. He said he thought my business development skills needed improvement. Well, his relationship skills needed work too. 

The most frustrating thing is when you can’t find them on Google or Facebook. I recently met someone by pure chance of shared Connecticut geography (it’s a long story) and we agreed to meet in person to catch up. Naturally, I wanted to Google him to make sure he wasn’t a murderer or worse, had an eHarmony video like that cat woman. I literally could not find him on the Facebook, and the only results that came up were his LinkedIn (sans picture), and his race times (definitely better than mine). He even brought that up while we met, that you purposely couldn’t find anything. Still, I found it alarming he must have known what I looked like before I did. Not alarming, just unfair. I still haven’t found him on Facebook, either. And it did end up being bad—he’s a Red Sox fan. Oy. 

I’ve Googled people applying for jobs with my company. I’ve Googled people I buy stuff from Craigslist on. Still, I search for no one nearly as often as I search for myself. My recent adventure was seeing what happened when I searched for myself on Wikipedia. Here are some interesting things about Sharons:

-Sharon is one of many names that could formerly be applied to males (as in the 19th-century historian Sharon Turner), but is now nearly always used of females. Well, there goes my dream of meeting a guy with the same name as me :-(

-In the United Kingdom its popularity peaked during the 1960s. It was the 10th most popular female name by 1964 and was still as high as 17th in 1974, but a sharp decline in popularity followed and since the 1980s it has not even featured in the top 100. Again, my unpopularity is reaffirmed. 

- There are towns called Sharon in a bunch of states in the US: California, Connecticut, Georgia, Kansas, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Vermont, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Maine, Kansas, and a Sharonville in Ohio. 

Here’s my personal favorite: SHARON (Single reactor system for High activity Ammonium Removal Over Nitrite) is a sewage treatment process.

Look at all the fun things I find out with some self-indulgence! I think, as they taught me in public school health class, that it is perfectly normal and healthy to indulge in this small act of hedonism. As long as you don’t forget about other people, you’re okay. And don’t make a mess.

Slippers are for the weak and coasters are for the foolish .

Creature comforts. The phrase brings up connotations of chicken noodle soup, warm blankets and a cozy couch. We have a word for it in Yiddish—haimish. As in, “Oy, Saul, that hotel we stayed in was terrible with the bed bugs but this new one with the mini bar is so haimish!” Enjoying all the comforts of home isn’t a bad thing; in fact, it’s probably the best feeling in the world. But as the Monkees say in their song Pleasant Valley Sunday, “Creature comfort goals/They only numb my soul”. Thus, as is custom with me, I’m here to rant about two things you probably use everyday and don’t think twice about—slippers and coasters. And I’m here to tell you that they are wrong.

Let’s start with slippers. First, as I recently was taught this weekend by roommates, slippers are for women and house shoes are for men. For the sake of the article and just to piss them off more, I’m going to refer to them all as slippers. Alex and Clyde have adamantly proclaimed how comfortable slippers are and how warm they keep their feet. Slippers apparently are like stepping into a slice of heaven every morning. Since I choose to stay barefoot in the morning like some godless heathen, I’m not allowed this slice of heaven, nor do I want it. Better to rule in hell than to serve in heaven. You don’t wear socks with slippers. Therefore, all that weird wool or fleece lining just sucks up your foot sweat and bakes in there. You know why your feet are so warm? You slippers wearers are just bathing your stinky toes in a fetid bath of ringworm and tuberculosis.

If you’re curious for more reasons on the dangers of warm feet, I encourage you to check out this video entitled “Slippers Suck” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5HpMYvSjGM. While I normally hate kids with YouTube channels, these kids bring up a valid point: If your feet get too warm, they’ll catch on fire. Have fun with your stumps. 

Apparently slippers are also very comfortable, besides being foul heaters. Feet pillows and all that. Here’s my concern—if slippers are your most comfortable pair of shoes, then maybe you’re buying shoes wrong. Yes, I know not all of my shoes are comfortable (mostly due to my vast collection of heels) but every shoe I wear on a daily basis is equally cozy. I don’t need one supreme pair of comfortable shoes because I make comfort a part of my shoe buying process. If my feet get cold, I put on a pair of socks.

I think slippers are something the bourgeois invented to set themselves apart from the proletariat. Ever notice how expensive slippers are too? It’s something the Rockefellers invented to make people feel as though they’ve made it, when really they’ve had warm feet all along. I can’t remember if they were the family with steel, oil or the steam engine but I don’t need to be a part of their upper class crust—my feet are stronger and more resistant than theirs. My warm-blooded toes don’t need something from a Brooks Brothers catalog to tell me otherwise.

On a similarly ridiculous thread, I also hate coasters. I’ve discussed this ad nauseum with my friend Jon Andersen and luckily, he agrees. Or maybe he’s too afraid to disagree when I get charged up on something I hate. Coasters, unlike slippers, do have a seemingly valid purpose: they prevent water rings from appearing on furniture because glasses sweat. I believe in condensation and beverage physics and all that. What I still don’t understand is how water rings are still prevalent. Why haven’t we developed a furniture technology to make our furniture resilient to water rings? If we can eradicate polio, can’t we immunize our furniture from a little H20? There must be some sort of spray or treatment for wood that can stop the terrible plague of the water ring.

Is the coaster market really that large and powerful that it controls how furniture is treated? I think Crate and Barrel is in on this one and bribing Ethan Allen and all other furniture stores to create wimpy wood finishes. It’s purposeful obsolescence, just like cell phones. Eventually, when we get tired of water marks, we’ll just buy a new coffee table. All because furniture has failed to evolve with the times. Why hasn’t Ikea done anything with this yet? They’re innovative but even the Fjorhlzt table I just invented probably still succumbs to water damage.

Our furniture should be sturdy but instead it’s treated like origami. I’m sure the pioneers in America knew how to make resilient tables. Yet, instead of progress, our furniture is more and more fragile. I shudder to think my future children might live in a world where they are assaulted by stodgy homeowners who scream ‘PUT A COASTER UNDER THAT LEMONADE!”

If there is anything we want for our children, it’s to have them live in a world better than the one we grew up in. Therefore, unborn spawn of Sharon—I have two wishes for you. May you develop my hardy feet and not waste your money on elitist footwear and may you have practical furniture that can withstand a fucking glass of water.