Dromedary Droppings

There is an American slang word, or perhaps it's a dated one limited to the circles of my youth in metropolitan New York. "Hump" is or was a noun used to describe an unpleasant person, one habituated to causing others pain and trouble.  In recent days, despite a sunny view of most matters and an increasingly likable late spring weather to complement the mood, I have encountered more than the usual number of humps while conducting business and traveling from point "A" to point "B".  This past Tuesday I drove to my alma mater, a traditionally well respected public high school in northwest Queens that recent economics and politics have brought to the verge of closing (or of being re-configured in some convoluted way by those addicted to "edumacation", i.e. social engineering of the most meddlesome variety), its woes only indirectly relevant to this blog entry's catalogue of gripes. I had come to take possession of the single essay offered by the teacher entrusted with informing and guiding prospective candidates and essayists to compete for a memorial scholarship that I helped establish in 1992 to honor my late friend and classmate as well as his sister who both died in separate automobile accidents.  For nineteen years I struggled with the tasks of reading and judging increasingly inferior essays on the subjects of Friendship, Character, Immigration and this year the theme was "Courage: What Is It and How Has It Manifested Itself in American and World History?" This essayist did not write on the topic, did not provide required documents (recommendations by teachers and/or faculty members), did not write an essay with the minimum number of words required, did not provide proof of U.S. citizenship as required and presented what was a pitiful example of zero insights, repetition and in short, a paper on the topic of Friendship that was a nauseating bore.  The person "in charge" had acknowledged (in a phone call I placed in mid-May) that she received my three e-mail communications laying out all the rules for the competition but did not respond to any of them because of some "technical difficulties." In fact, no communications (telephone calls, letters) were received during the nearly two months provided for candidates to prepare, write and compete. Indifference, passive aggressive behavior, low morale with the rumors of unemployment next semester, political animus toward me with this year's traditionalist theme: were one of these or even all of them, the reason(s) that this well established scholarship competition was virtually ignored? Is the concept of courage (and the respect for it) now considered part of a right wing conspiracy, i.e. too closely resembling unilateral American initiative or rugged individualism…anathema in the Age of Obama? I do not know. I do know that when finally my phone call was returned by this teacher in mid-June and she made the admission that only a single paper would be offered as part of the competition (??), a defensive lament was quickly expressed by her (before I had uttered a word) using the following exact words: "It would really suck if she (the essayist) did not receive the scholarship award." Where was I?  Was this a "Twilight Zone" episode? Was I actually speaking with a bona fide teacher, employed by the Dept. of Education of the City of New York? Was she a college graduate with a degree in education and was she licensed to teach in the state of New York? Of course, the answer was probably "yes" to the last three of these questions. But my memories of high school teachers were that (though they were not Einsteinian in their intellectual prowess, nor were they the epitome of gentility and grace in their manners and speech) the use of the vulgarism "suck" and even the dropping of the pretense "this is a well deserving pupil, her potential is limitless with the right encouragement" would be unthinkable occurences or utterances from an instructor from my student days of an honest and generally incorrupt faculty. The phone call the following morning by the student in question was jaw dropping for several reasons. The student had indubitably and inappropriately been given my telephone number by this teacher. The candidate was told that she needed to submit her recommendations and the teacher, coward that she was, did not want to deal with me (I had left no doubt of my dissatisfaction when leaving her office the day before) and so took the expedient and wrong route of leaving all communication between me and the pupil. Wretched things, happily, come to an end as well as good ones. I spared the student all of the dramatics and lied that a decision was pending. A competent teacher, seemingly devoid of passive-aggressiveness, received my call informing that no one qualified for the award this year. I vented to her about the experience, but was exceedingly relieved there would be no more contact with this academic cesspool.  But my next hump was waiting in the wings.

Driving to the supermarket later that day, I approached a corner, signaled my intention to turn and made eye contact with a tall young man preparing to cross. In my path (had he not stopped) he did not move but appeared to resent prudently moving back a single millimeter. I gently tooted my horn as the turn was made and in an instant he pounded the car's roof with an angry fist.  I continued for several yards and then stopped to get out and shout a protest: "you saw me, I signaled and unless you're deaf, you heard the horn." Something was mumbled in mostly unintelligible broken English.  His aggressiveness seemed to wane upon being confronted and I wisely did not push my luck, given all the unknown elements of dealing with a stranger with an attitude.  Now it was time though, for another "dromedary" to void his bowels upon my weary head.

This one was quite literally an excremental incident and it gave my optimism its most severe kick in the pants to date, as well as challenged my ability to brush off the boorish churls metastasizing all around me. Friday being "full" garbage collection day (all the categories of trash) in my neighborhood,  I approached my three empty (or so I thought) receptacles and prepared to carry them back to their positions near my driveway.  "Well, the sanitation boys left some newspaper pages in the bottles and cans pail" I quizzically thought.  "But wait, papers belong in the paper barrel."  More puzzlement and then an unpleasantly familiar thought came to me: "Oh no, not again!" I shook my head.  A mystery dog walker had, for the third time this week, deposited the doggy droppings of an apparently very large canine into my bottle and cans pail barely wrapped in a newspaper with Korean characters and the steaming, pile of ugliness was, due to its inadequate containment and size, silently announcing itself, again, as a fragrant devil taunting me to undertake the unjust chore awaiting my fortitude to combat in some small way those who delightedly take comfort in the aphorism that "all evil needs to flourish is for good men to do nothing."  Well, don't know how good a man I am or if I'm only a "good for nothing", but Switzerland didn't get its reputation for immaculate and pleasing beauty by just wishing offal to disappear.  So weary and more than a bit irritated, I scrubbed the trash can long after a bone-tired feeling, intensified by the thought "this should not have been necessary", ensured that I would not be moving a solitary muscle for a long time, once my caboose hit my easy chair.

The rest was peaceful and uneventful, but before it grew later, I remembered that I needed to place a phone call to someone who I hadn't seen or heard from in several years.  I needed advice about an automotive issue and this person was a member of a car club that I still paid my dues to and remained, or so I thought, a fellow member in good standing. The call was placed at 8:30 in the evening, near the end of, but still within the societally acceptable time to telephone folks who are not close friends or relatives.  A very young child answered after four rings. Schmo (let's call him that name: this is my best effort to avoid using a far less pleasant epithet) has a grandchild, I thought.  Maybe he has mellowed, I calculated hopefully. "May I speak to a grownup, please?" I asked with formal courtesy.  A dropped receiver and several seconds of other unknown sounds were followed by "Hello, yes?"  Somehow all the memories of this person's personality came rushing back to me and I suddenly became inarticulate and highly aware of the less than generous vibes that this guy had always seemed to send forth to his fellow man.  I identified myself and explained that I needed some help and that I was a member of the automobile club that he had been an officer of for many years.  I also added sheepishly, that I had not attended a meeting for also, many years.  He seized upon this as something remarkable, not revealing if this was an interesting fact, worthy of enquiries of concern or just a reprehensible failure of camaraderie and good tribalism.  He just silently seemed to make a judgment about this stranger at the other end of his telephone line.  I struggled to begin to explain that I was interested in him recommending a mechanic near to where my car was garaged, since it was near where our club meetings used to be held.  Before I could clearly express what I was requesting, he interrupted me to ask if he could call me back.  I quickly agreed and assured him that he could call me back of course, at his convenience and I gave him my phone number. He neither asked me to repeat it nor did it seem to take very long at all for him to "get it."  Schmo never called back and I only expected him to frankly, very fleetingly. There always was a want of feeling, a parsimonious nature that extended to all matters, whether financial or on a personal level when dealing with Schmo. So I was shat upon yet again.  So what?  Well, the "what" is that this one hurt more than the others.  Did he decide that I was looking for money, a special favor, or that I had a sob story?  It was a simple request for networking advice about car repairs: members do it all the time and it's in fact, one of the chief reasons for forming and joining such societies.  My tiredness that night and inability to concisely explain what I wanted, his disinclination to help a near stranger (someone Schmo could not bother trying to remember the identity of), all these factors combined to dishearten a guy who already had had a not so great day.  The best I could do later that evening was to cheer myself with the creation of a new category of "hump" and to enshrine Schmo into its Hall of Fame (Infamy?) as a charter member: a camel.  With twice the passive aggressive nastiness, he certainly represented a "double hump" mentality like the twin fleshy protuberances of that famed beast of burden.  The annoyance of dealing with rabbit pellets while caring for such a pet as a child, seems not so troublesome in retrospect.  I hope I never meet an unkind elephant.