Dignity

The cab driver gestured to the back of his SUV.

"Yeah, I think you're right," I said. "It fits."

He shook his head. We weren't really speaking the same language.

He began gesturing again, pointing at me, then the back of his SUV.

"Ahhh," I said. "Oh, you want me to sit back here...with that?"

I waved my hand at the desk we'd just purchased and crammed into the back-back of his car, eliminating his actual back seats.

He nodded vigorously.

As a kid, I loved riding in the back-back of our Jeep. It felt like an adventure, even if we were just going to the grocery store. 

But, at 31, I have standards. And dignity to maintain. You know, the kind of dignity you maintain while standing on Broadway trying to hail a cab with an Ikea desk you bought from a girl who just graduated from college.

I looked at Tiffany. She shrugged and headed toward the front seat.

I crawled into the back-back underneath our desk.

"Yes, ma'm," the cabbie said, pleased.

Crossing Manhattan takes a long time on a Friday night. Twisted up between the legs of our desk, I caught up on lots of emails and posted a status update on Facebook. I even texted Tiffany, concerned at the hardship she was facing up there in an actual seat, with air conditioning.

"Look in your rear view mirror," I typed.

"What am I supposed to be seeing?" she answered.

"My hand!" I responded. I was waving my hand like a maniac through the crack between our desk drawer and the right rear door, trying to catch her eye.

"Can't see anything," she wrote. "Tinted windows."

I sighed and turned around to find the man in the car behind me staring through our rear windshield, which was not, like all the other windows in our cab, tinted.

I gave him a little wave. 

Dignity be damned.

Home Sweet... Wait a Minute...

Of all the things I don't do well, being wrong is what I'm best at being bad at.

Unfortunately, I'm wrong a lot.

Even, it turns out, about which apartment building I belong in.

We live in a dark brown brownstone on a street with approximately three other dark brown brownstones (and other light brown ones, pinkish ones, greyish ones, etc.). For the first few months, it was easy to tell which building was ours (Apart from looking at the address. That's too easy.) because there was a bike chained up out front. But, once the weather improved, whoever owns that bike must have gotten on it and decided not to come back because all that's left is the lock.

Sometimes, I go up the wrong stairs and even into the wrong vestibule before I realize I'm not actually home.

Take, for instance, the other day when Tiffany and I got into a fight on our run.

It went something like this:

(heading out of Central Park onto a certain street)

Me (exhausted): "Why are we going this way?"

Tiffany: "Why does it matter?"

Me: "Because my way is faster."

Tiffany: "But why does it matter?"

Me: (silent treatment)

By the time we made it to our street, I was a few angry paces ahead, so I was first to slow to a stop and walk (read: stomp) up our stairs.

"Where are you going?" Tiffany called, as she walked past me to our real stairs.

Why does it matter?