Amidst all of our Christmas happenings at the apartment, there has been, of course, a flurry of secretive gift-purchasing and clandestine gift-wrapping in respective bedrooms. (Kayla, who adopted my bedroom as Gift Wrapping Central after buying Allie's gift, left my door temporarily open as she cut and taped and tied, confident that Allie wouldn't budge from her comfortable couch position in the living room. When Allie innocently inquired what we were up to in my room, Kayla--without saying a single word--swiftly slammed my bedroom door shut with an enviably effective sweeping motion. I laughed at this transpiration of events. As did Allie, once she figured out why Kay was slamming the door in her direction.)
Audrey and I recently made a journey to the Target of East Harlem (yes, Mary Schindler, they DO have Targets in New York...Manhattan is still part of Planet Earth, it would appear) for some last-minute Christmas gifts and goodies. Target is easily accessible by bus--it's only one stop, and then we just have to walk a couple of avenues east--but waiting for the bus is often torture, particularly in this cold, hellishly windy weather.
Once we were properly laden with bags, then, for our return trip, walking the extra avenue west to catch the bus seemed horribly tiresome. Audge had my Christmas gift in tow (she'd sent me elsewhere in the store while she went off to pick it out and purchase it), so she was trying to keep that particular bag as far away from me as possible. I, meanwhile, had of course purchased a variety of oddly-shaped things, including two rolls of Christmas wrapping paper. One of these rolls was a respectable three-foot size, but the other was easily four-and-a-half feet tall. And while the salesgirl used the largest shopping bag possible to house these rolls of wrapping paper, I kept inadvertently stabbing Audrey in either the leg or side (or sometimes both at once! Little victories, my friends.) as we trekked back to the bus stop. I also had a gallon of skim milk and several other bags of heavy groceries that were hurting my arms. I should not be blamed, then, for suggesting that we just hop onto the bus still heading down First Avenue, rather than walking up the extra avenue and catching the same bus line heading down Second. I theorized that since it was the same bus line, whose final stop on First was 125th Street, it would just make a left at 125th and then head back down Second. Really, we'd probably save time. 125th was the very next stop, and then we'd only have to ride the bus back down two stops to 101st and 2nd, which is where we'd get off. We'd have the warmth of the bus for a comfortably nice length of time. And we wouldn't have to walk any further with our ridiculous and potentially injury-causing shopping bags.
Perhaps I should mention at this point that this is certainly not the first time Audrey has been involved in helping me carry an awkwardly-shaped package for a somewhat daunting distance. Very shortly after Audge moved into the apartment with Allie and me, I forced her to journey to the Bronx UPS pickup station with me so that I could employ her to help me carry piano legs for my keyboard that my parents had sent me. (This is, in itself, quite a story. Suffice it to say that my little sister forgot to include the LEGS OF THE PIANO when she delivered said keyboard to Audrey for her cross-country-journey to the Land of New York with the moving truck. I am still unsure as to how one forgets to include the very apparatus that holds the keyboard up when making such a delivery, but when I asked dearest Kristen why she hadn't included them, her response was only: "You didn't ask for them specifically." Oh, Little Kristen.) Anyway. The package containing the keyboard legs was approximately five feet long and somewhat heavy. It required both of us, each holding an end of the package, to walk in a carefully-timed pattern, in order to avoid jostling one another with the edges. 'Twas a long walk to and fro the subway, too. On top of all of this, I INSISTED that we see a movie at the theatre sixteen blocks from our apartment that was being shown in the early afternoon. By the time we got to the UPS station and had actually procured the package (the UPS man literally defined the phrase "taking his own sweet time" for us, kindly enough), we had only an hour to journey back to the apartment, drop off the keyboard legs, and run to the theatre.
I say "run" because that's actually what we did. We ran. Or, we jogged. First we jogged with the piano-leg package. (Which got both whistles and chuckles from onlookers, depending on what section of the city we were in.) I had our walking plan mapped out and timed down to the minute, and we were heavily out of breath by the time we arrived at the apartment and quite literally threw the package into the living room before running back out. We then did legit speedwalks from the apartment to the theatre: Audrey had not yet become fully acquainted with the New York speedwalk, wholly useful in times of especial tardiness or aggravation, but this experience was certainly a learning one. I had a good speedwalk already mastered, with resulted in my walking a full block ahead of Audge for the majority of the trip, on the opposite side of the street. I took to looking behind me every half-block or so, just to make sure Audrey hadn't given up on me completely. (This also occurred in September. In the boiling, boiling heat.) By the time we got to the theatre and were safely seated (we only missed one preview!), I was so incredibly sweaty that I had to lift my shirt up over my shoulders. (I chose this day to wear a woolen shirt. Sometimes...it be like damn.) So. Disgustingly. Sweaty. Took me most of the movie to return to a normal body temperature and pulse.
But. But, but, but. I digress. (Duh.) We're back to the Christmas Target Trip. I have just had us catch the bus heading in the opposite direction of the way we're actually trying to go, in the hope that it will immediately turn itself around.
Naturally, this did not happen. The bus did hang a left at 125th Street, but it then parked and all passengers were ordered off. This was where the bus driver took his break. So Audrey and I had to hoist all of our packages off the bus, wait in the freezing cold for an absurdly long time, awkwardly make small talk with the MTA bus drivers standing next to us, purchase new bus tickets, and then climb back aboard the bus to now, finally, head back downtown.
The moral of this story is that I should always listen to my instincts regarding public transportation and then do exactly the opposite of what my instincts are telling me to do.
No comments:
Post a Comment