Just North of Whoville Turiskylie, Joyce (smart books to read .TXT) 📖

I told you I was going to stop by.” I tried to give him his cue. “Remember? To get my cat.”

Pick up your cue! Pick up your cue!

“You have a cat?”

Oh no. Oh god no. It was over.

“Wow,” Nate said as he looked at us both, “that cat really does hide.”

“Oh, yeah---the cat,” Alex chimed in. “Right.”

“I should be going,” Nate said as he edged towards the door and accidentally stepped in the hairball.

“Oh…Nate, I’m sorry about this,” I apologized and handed him some paper towels.

“It’s okay. You guys probably need to talk or something,” he said as he wiped the hairball off his shoe, but lost his balance and slipped in the rest of the hairball. “I really should go,” he picked himself up and practically ran out the door.

“How could you do this to me?” I repeated back to Alex, recreating his stunning performance.

“Isn’t that what I was supposed to say?”

“Maybe back on page eighteen of the script. Catch up, Barrymore. We broke up. Remember?”

“But…wouldn’t I still have feelings?”

“Don’t get all Method on me now,” I said in exasperation.

“Anyway, I just wanted to stop by and tell you that Celia’s sending a courier over tomorrow with my wallet and a few other things. She thinks I’m still living here so I gave her this address. He’ll be by around six, so just make sure you’re home.”

“It’s your stuff, why can’t you be here?”

“I promised Tanya I’d take her to Rao’s for dinner.”

“You just got back together? How did you get a reservation at Rao’s?”

“I made it last year. It’s…our anniversary. Cost me an arm and an ass.”

“Well, you must be using a coupon because I still see an ass.”

“Oh, funny. You’re getting mouthy in your old age. And since when are you so chummy with the building manager?”

“And you’re getting senile in yours. Since when did you forget I had a cat?”

“I’ve never even seen your cat.”

“What did you think this was?” I said as I held up a dish of cat food.

“I don’t know. Potpourri?”

How a grown man who handled other people’s money could think that a dish on the floor filled with brown chunks that smelled like meat was potpourri was beyond my comprehension.

What I could comprehend the next morning was that it was snowing. Not a blizzard. No crazy winds. Just a steady stream of thick cartoon-like snowflakes floating down past my window. Luckily, the roofers were far enough along in their task that they’d managed to put a tarp over their work. And lucky for me, I had my trusty snow boots to get me thru any snow that might accumulate during the day.

Unluckily for me, I had to deal with New Yorkers.

Because about fifty percent of New Yorkers do something that no one does in any other part of the country. An anomaly so bizarre, that when I first witnessed this behavior four years ago, I actually grabbed my cell phone and immediately began calling my friends back home to tell them the craziest thing I’d seen in NYC. Now before I say this, I should make it very clear that the behavior I am about to point out, is absolutely, positively true. This is no urban myth. I am not making this up. And this is---hold onto your hats…

New Yorkers use umbrellas in the snow.

Yes! It’s true! I had never seen such a thing in all my thirty years of living in the Midwest, where snow fell regularly and aplenty. In fact, were you to open an umbrella in the snow in Milwaukee people would actually point at you and laugh. Of course, then they might feel bad, and wonder if you might possibly “special” and they shouldn’t have laughed. After all, you might have wandered out of a facility of some sort and become discombobulated by the snowflakes. They might even alert a kindly policeman who would approach you slowly so as not to frighten you, and then ask in a soft and gentle voice, “Everything okay there, little man?”

But New Yorkers think absolutely nothing of it. It snows and they open an umbrella, as if it were a perfectly normal thing to do.

It is not.

You do not use umbrellas in the snow. You use umbrellas in the rain. You use a HAT in the snow. Period. A hat. You can also wear a scarf. Or mittens. Or any other winter paraphernalia you so choose. You do not use an umbrella. Have you ever seen a Norman Rockwell painting of people walking in the snow with an umbrella? No. Because it is not right. It’s unnatural.

Case closed.

Nevertheless, I have calculated that approximately fifty percent of New Yorkers will open an umbrella in the snow. Why? I have absolutely no idea. I can only suspect in-breeding of some sort. And if I were ever to run for Mayor of New York City---my first prohibition would be against umbrellas in the snow. Why? Because they look stupid, first of all. Not very good PR for the city that is supposed to house the best and the brightest. Second, because New Yorkers are not very good with umbrellas to begin with. Even in a light rainfall, when some people might simply choose to pull up the hood of their jacket---this is not enough. You can’t do it. You NEED an umbrella. For protection. Because the other people walking down the street with their umbrellas don’t care about you. I’ve had my eye nearly poked out at least ten times in the past four years. And if I were Mayor of New York City, Reckless Umbrella Use would be a crime. It’s the number one unreported crime statistic in this city. It’s time for us to come out of the shadows and reclaim our sidewalks!

The worst offenders