Some days this city is a mean place.
I've never noticed it before, but suddenly everyone in New York has turned into Christmas Monsters running around buying gifts and viewing holiday displays. Some of these people look happy, but most just look angry, bored or generally miserable.
Christmas Monsters walk into you on the street. They don't hold doors for you or help you pick up dropped packages. They ignore you when you're lost and trying to ask directions, and if they should (accidentally) make eye contact with you they immediately start staring through you like they're looking at some sort of ghost.
The funny thing is that before all this holiday rush, I was a defender of New Yorkers. There have been so many who've proven the old stereotypes wrong -- the old man who offered to help me carry my grocery bags in the rain, the Target worker who gave me discounts for no reason, the little Chinese girl on the train who kept shyly smiling and waving at me.
New Yorkers aren't supposed to have humanity; they aren't supposed to care about other people because they're busy worrying about themselves. I never thought this was true until the past week.
Maybe it's a phase, an annual adolescence the city goes through. Brains all out of whack, filled with Holiday Hormones and bodies filling out with shopping bags.
Whatever it may be, I hope this city returns to normal soon. It's really starting to get to me, how depressing this season can be and how stressed everyone is over it. If forgetting to be human and kind is a part of the holidays, then what is the point of celebrating them?
In other news, in an effort to cheer up, I'm going to visit the tree at Rockefeller Center. I'm going to bring my digital camera if I can get it work -- it's being a brat with me, just like the rest of this city. But, I'm going to go and stare at Christmas lights and ice skaters and one big green giant and try to get into the holiday spirit -- without turning into a Christmas Monster myself.
1 comment:
meh, i highly doubt you'll turn into one. but i feel ya on the christmas undelight! Even here in podunk Rochester there are unfriendly shppers at malls. They'll even steal ur stuff RIGHT OUT OF YOUR CART! that is why i love being a cook right now, cause when i can shop EVERYONE is at work, and when i get outta work, i've missed the horrible rush! damn, you make me wanna move there more and more. i'm jelous!
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