Snarky Ironies

The last 48 hours have been fraught with a few deliciously snarky ironies. A girl takes her petty pleasures where she may. Here are a few case studies.

-I flew out to Phoenix on Monday for a 36 hour odyssey in order to persuade some pharmaceutical muckity mucks to buy annual sponsorship in a quarterly publication. One did bite (essentially) so that will mean $100K to the corporate coffers and validation for the expense of my trip. Because I was planning only an overnight trip, I had with me only one pair of shoes--a pair of impossibly uncomfortably three inch black stiletto slingbacks. While they served their purpose for business, by the time I was ready to head back to the airport, I was in pain. The notion of a four hour+ pink eye flight home in these heinous shoes (after wearing them for two days straight) was too much to bear. I had 20 minutes before my cab was to arrive at the hotel; I high tailed it to a mall next door, found an Ann Taylor store and bought a sweet pair of bow embellished suede black flats. They had to be comfortable. I'm such an asshole. The suede flats had little give. By the time I shoved by air-swollen dogs in these sweet little slippers when the flight descended in New York, I yowled in discomfort. They cut my heels. They pursed my toes. Walking to baggage check, I was praying for my stilettos. Those flat motherfuckers are going to Goodwill.

-On the aforementioned flight, I sat next to a very skinny woman who I came to know during the course of the flight. She was from New Canaan, a rather ritzy area of Connecticut. Her husband was a successful bonds trader in Manhattan and she was a mother of three who was taking a challenging six month course at the French Culinary Institute so she could make tarts. She was clearly privileged and someone who enjoyed a charmed, easy life. At one point she arose from her seat to remove something from her Hermes bag. Out tumbled a distressed Almond Joy candy wrapper. Instinctively, I retrieved it from the ground and handed it to her. Her face dropped and while taking the wrapper from my hand uttered, "Oh...busted."

-Arriving home from work tonight, I got to the building elevator and saw another woman coming down through the vestibule. Because I have my moments of good etiquette, I waited and held the door for the woman to get to the elevator. She started to walk past the elevator, saw I was confining the door and reluctantly got on. After I inquired to her floor and pressed the button on her behalf, she volunteered, "Well, I usually walk up." Now, I had pressed the tenth floor for her so I had to ask, "You walk ten flights of stairs?" She nodded and then said, "I once read an article that said if you walk up ten flights of stairs a day, you can lose ten pounds a month." Now she was a petite, slim woman so I said, "It must work. You're quite slim." "Oh, I've always been slim," she retorted, "I just like to keep firm." I agreed she appeared very firm, but I didn't have the heart to tell her it would take Restalyne and not ten flights of stairs to firm her face.

-On the aforementioned flight back to New York last night, we came in over Manhattan. I always enjoy this flight path and never tire of it for if the night is clear (and it was last night), the outline of my intense borough is as concise as the maps posted in the subway. The island is such a perfect grid--when lit, it's as if an intrepid child took a Lite Brite kit and fashioned a grid, leaving a small darkened square patch for Central Park. I may be old and I may be cynical but the beauty of my little patch of the world was clear. There's my neighborhood and the George Washington Bridge. There’s midtown and Times Square with blazing lights. There's the tip of the Empire State Building and the scalloped edges of the Chrysler Building. There's downtown with the MetLife Building and the lit hole that is still Ground Zero. From this height, it is perfection and I revel in its symmetrical beauty. This morning while firmly on the streets of my beloved island, I see clearly all its rough and ratty earmarks which lack the pristine clarity spied through the evening skies.

And oddly, I appreciate them both.