Hard Times on the Hardwood
January 13, 2010
The “city game” isn’t what it used to be. The Knicks are on course for another losing season, and it has been years since a local college team has made the NCAA tournament, much less contended for a national championship.
New York’s basketball picture wasn’t always so bleak. The five boroughs were once as well known for basketball as they were for bagels and nightlife. [Read more]
Mr. Disconnected
December 3, 2009
As I walk to the subway during the morning rush, I wonder why everyone except me is furiously working their thumbs or gabbing into their cell phones. Do my unmoving hands and lips mean that I am unpopular?
I wasn’t always so self-conscious about being behind the communications curve. When cell phones first came on the scene I was a holdout, telling everyone that modern technology was threatening social intercourse—a line that I hoped also explained why I still had a rotary phone.
Yet saying that I was sans cell phone became like admitting I was without a watch or a wallet, something usually only heard from ex-hippies suffering a ’60s flashback. I was terrified of what it would do to my reputation if someone I knew caught me making a call from a phone booth. They’d probably think I was a drug dealer.
Owning a cell phone has made me face an embarrassing truth—I don’t need one. Last year I lost my mobile and bought a new one. I asked the salesperson to recommend a calling plan.
“I see that the usage of your last phone was very low, so you should go for something basic,” she said.
“I’m always on my land line,” I lied, lest she think I’m unsociable.
Not only do I rarely call anyone, but few people call me. This is convenient when I go to the movies or a funeral, since I don’t have to remember to turn off my phone, but it otherwise makes me feel like a hermit.
When I’m out to dinner with someone who is constantly interrupted by calls, I’ll take my phone from my pocket and look at it, making believe that I’m checking my missed calls. “I keep my ringer on silent,” I’ll explain.
Recently I was at a work meeting when my phone rang. I excitedly removed it from my pocket and fumbled it to the floor, before pressing the correct button.
“Your time to consolidate your credit card debt is running out,” the automated voice said.
“I’m in a meeting, I’ll call you back,” I said, as if I were talking to a live person.
The phone-free subway used to provide me a break from worrying that I looked like a loner. But ever since straphangers began typing away on their BlackBerrys, my underground respite has become another venue to advertise my unimpressive social life. (I’m convinced that because of all the texting, mobile emailing and twittering we do, future generations will be born with eyes under their chins and an extra thumb.)
I wish I had enough friends to require a non-stop communications stream. But I can’t imaging needing to email on the go any more than I can see myself talking on the phone while walking to my therapist’s office—where I talk about why I don’t have more friends to send text messages to.
Sometimes I wish I were elderly. Walking down the street—eyes looking straight ahead, useless hands at my sides—passersby would assume that I was too set in my old-technology ways to use a BlackBerry or cell phone. “Probably on his way to see his friends at the senior center,” they’d think.
Until then, I have decided to walk around hooked up to an iPod. This way people will know that I’m too busy listening to Beyoncé, Bruce and Bono to talk to anyone. To keep my thumbs occupied, I’ll play air guitar. n
Ben Krull is a lawyer and essayist who lives on the Upper East Side.
My Adult Fantasy League
November 5, 2009
You may think that turning 50 has made my fantasies about playing Major League Baseball a bit implausible. But I perform like an athlete half my age.
While my studio apartment is too crowded with breakable objects for me to swing a bat like I once did in my spacious childhood bedroom, I still dive on my carpeting, snagging screaming line drives and lay down perfect squeeze bunts using my toilet plunger as my bat. [Read more]
Since ’69
September 23, 2009
While 2009 marks the 40th anniversary of Woodstock, man on the moon and the Miracle Mets, it is has also been four decades since my 10th birthday, making me reflect on how childhood has changed since then.
Gone: the anticipation of waiting for your favorite movie to appear on television. My favorite was The Wizard of Oz, which was broadcast once a year. Every morning of the week The Wizard was scheduled to air, my father would sing songs from the movie, working me into a frenzy. One year a rainbow appeared the afternoon the film played, and I was certain it was a message from the heavens. Today’s children have DVDs of their favorite movies, so watching them is no longer a special event. [Read more]
Fifty is My New Sixty
August 26, 2009
I recently turned 50. In other words, I am FIFTY; the BIG FIVE-0; the age when there are MORE YESTERDAYS THAN TOMORROWS! To mark this milestone of my dance with mortality, I went for a physical. Since I lap-swim and watch my diet, I was sure to ace it.
After taking my blood pressure, administering an EKG, drawing a blood sample and poking me all over, my doctor, Craig Warschauer, gave me his verdict: “Your EKG is abnormal.” [Read more]
The Art of the Line
July 29, 2009
I have great respect for the ire New Yorkers express when someone cuts in a line. This is especially so when I accidentally go out of turn while placing my Sunday morning order at H&H Bagels, eliciting a shrill “I’m next!” from the person in front of me.
I want to shout, “I thought you had already ordered…I swear it was a mistake!” Instead I shamefully mumble “sorry,” hoping that nobody else noticed my faux pas. [Read more]
The Long and Short of It
July 1, 2009
I had resolved to end my relationship with Nick. But after our 25 years together I found it difficult to cut him out of my life.
When I started seeing Nick, he was working near my Upper East Side apartment. He was tall, with wavy black hair. The first time we met he motioned me to sit and ran his fingers through my hair. After a few clips with his scissors, I knew I had found my barber.
Having a good barber was important to me, as I had been traumatized by the Afro I had as a teenager. [Read more]
My Heartbreak Kid
June 5, 2009
I recently got dumped by an 8-year-old. The jilting occurred at a community center on the Upper West Side, where I have been a volunteer tutor the past two years.
This year I was matched with a student who I will call Alex. We met Wednesdays for reading and writing, while another tutor, Karen, helped on Mondays with math. [Read more]
STRANGERS AMONG ME
May 11, 2009
I don’t know if the city made me an introvert or if I was born that way. But New York’s custom of treating strangers like strangers suits my penchant for privacy.
My desire for solitude comes under assault during lunch hour, when entering one of Chinatown’s crowded restaurants I am asked if I will share a table. While I like eating in a communal atmosphere about as much as I like standing next to an un-showered straphanger during rush hour, I say yes—lest I be seen as anti-social.
[Read more]
50 REASONS TO SING THE BLUES
April 9, 2009
In a few months I will be 50, which only bothers me when I think about it, which is just about all the time. The source of my malaise is that I am single and without offspring.
My angst becomes especially acute when I attend family functions that include my parents, my Aunt Judy and Judy’s nine grandchildren. At a bat-mitzvah I attended a few weeks ago, my parents kept saying, “Judy has nine grandchildren! Nine grandchildren!” [Read more]
