When the Detroit Tigers lose, they lose big. And they lose for a long time. And nobody goes to their games, even if they get a shiny new stadium. If the fans do go to their shiny new stadium, they get assaulted by a scoreboard that is only visible from three-quarters of the seats anyway because the stadium, while shiny, is so poorly designed that no matter where the batter stands or what time of day it is, the sun blinds him. But, like with the other Detroit sports teams, when they win, they win even bigger than they lose and the whole city rallies around them. It’s glorious. You don’t even have to be a sports fan to enjoy the party.
After beating the New York Yankees at Comerica Park on Saturday night, the Detroit Tigers ran into their plastic-shrouded locker room, grabbed bottles of champagne, and ran back onto the field to celebrate with their fans, dousing them with bubbly. It was just unbridled, euphoric happiness. And no rioting! Something for everyone! Yay! My friend Mara has heard people say the players overdid it, so maybe you have to be from Detroit to understand how completely appropriate such revelry is. Or maybe not. I thought it was perfect.
And then Yankee pitcher Cory Lidle died Wednesday when the airplane he was flying crashed into an Upper East Side apartment building. I couldn’t help thinking that if the Yankees had won, then Lidle would have been alive in Oakland. Mara said she thought the same thing. Because when something tragic happens, you think of the series of events preceding it, and even if they’re not connected to the event itself, they appear to be.
Anyway, in lighter news, my parents were in town last Friday, as were our friends from Israel. In a well-timed scheduling switcheroo, I didn’t have to work, so after a tremendous lunch with the ladies, Einat and I headed to MoMA. I hadn’t been there since I was a kid and it’s recently been completely refurbished. Aside from the verbal lashing I got from the “Starry Night” guard for momentarily touching the wall underneath the painting’s description (the only way I could read it around the giant crowd was to crouch beneath it), it was fabulous.
Einat and I wandered over to the objets d’art — things like Eames chairs and Alessi teapots — and there were walls of posters and prints. I used to work for a graphic designer named Milton Glaser, a legend in the field and a truly exceptional, kind, brilliant, patient man, and one of his posters was on display. (Actually, two: It’s a pair of Mahalia Jackson illustrations, mirror images of the same design, so MoMA had both sides opposite each other, like a reflection. Cool.) I was pleased to see it — it felt comfortable and familiar to be looking on something I’d seen around a studio for two years. And while working with Milton himself was a completely positive experience, what DID surprise me was that I didn’t feel the twinge of anger that I usually get when I think about my time at his studio — not, again, because of him, but because of the woman who thought she was my boss but really wasn’t. To protect, well, myself, really, I will refer to her forthwith as Shitwig.
Because of Shitwig, I battled a serious case of Office PTSD during and well after my tenure there. While I was Milton’s assistant, I had a recurring dream in which I would go to my usual corner bagel vendor in the morning, arrive at the studio during an in-progress meeting, walk straight up to Shitwig and pummel her over the head with my bagel. I would wake up gratified, knowing that some good was made of carb-based breakfast food.
Shitwig was an angry, bitter woman who dragged you across the pavement for the most minor slip-ups and oversights because the sense of power fed her. Yeah, one of those. She would belittle me in front of my coworkers, criticize my decisions and lifestyle, and then expect me to sit there and listen, enthralled, to stories of her sad, sad life. Our receptionist had a learning disability and Shitwig would dress her down for misspelling a word and then whisper to me that the woman was “a fucking stupid girl.” Shitwig was 63 at the time, one of those brash New Yawk biddies with a grating, asphalt smoker’s voice, and could barely walk two steps without stopping to catch her breath. She smoked at her desk regardless of her coworkers’ comfort and, you know, THE LAW, because she couldn’t go up and down the stairs once an hour to smoke outside. When I first started dating Josh, she picked up a bottle from her desk of what I thought was Renuzit air freshener but turned out to be perfume, and she doused me in it with a huge spritz-gust; I had to go on a date smelling like tarred old lady and Jean Naté.
She was losing her hair and it made me happy. (Hence, Shitwig.) She’d offer favors but always at a price: When a hurricane blew through New York, she tried to give everyone in the studio some cash in case we got stranded at home, but nobody took it because there were always strings attached to her Mother Hen acts of “kindness.” She’d approve my vacation days but then hold them over me later, even though I earned them. The day after I threw out my back while basically waitressing a major business meeting (five hours of running up and down four flights of stairs with food, coffee and files), I called Milton to tell him I wasn’t coming in because I had to go to the hospital to get checked out; she picked up the other line and barked, “WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU?!?” (Three doctors, three sets of x-rays and physical therapy, that’s what, Shitwig.) After I left my job (so desperate that I gave notice without another job to go to), one of my former coworkers told me Shitwig was diagnosed with emphysema, and I was glad. I would often feel bad about feeling so virulently hateful of her: I was raised to respect my elders, and she was someone I viewed as having a dissatisfying life and who was too set in her ways to change. But then she’d say or do something so vile that it just confirmed all my misgivings. Can it really be that hard to feel sympathy for someone so pathetic?
It took at least a year and a half of distance from that place before I stopped fantasizing about telling her off (or pushing her in front of a cab) if I ever ran into her on the street. Office PTSD gets into my bloodstream and it takes me a long, long time to let it go. It’s a different kind of anger and resentment than I’ve had for other incidents in my life, maybe because with Office PTSD, you have to play the game every single day until you find another (inevitably dysfunctional) place to work. I had to leave Michigan to get over Nancy, my wackadoo coworker from my advertising job in Michigan who didn’t bathe and would bring her Federline family to work so they could make long-distance phone calls because they bought drugs with all their utility money. (Seriously. She would leave the office at a moment’s notice to go on road trips in a Winnebago with an 82-year-old nun. Before I moved, my friends Joska and Mark recorded a song for me called “Sweat and Nancy.” Sample lyrics: “Her B.O. is nuclear-powered / When was the last time she showered?”) Anyway, I avoided the entire neighborhood where Milton’s office is located for a year and a half just because I didn’t want to enter the halo of suck that Shitwig cast over the area. I admired Milton’s work around the city, but it always reminded me of Shitwig and I’d walk away with a somewhat metallic taste in my mouth. Avoidance, at that time in my life, was cathartic. But I didn’t feel the halo at all when I saw Milton’s poster last week, and now I feel all grown-up. I have evolved.
Stephanie called me a few days ago from Marblehead, Massachusetts, where my parents were visiting her during Phase 2 of the Great East Coast Adventure. (They’re back here now.) She was on her way back to her apartment while they shopped. “The weather forecast wasn’t that accurate,” she said. “See, I’m wearing a turtleneck and it’s 90.” Stephanie lives in a town where everything was built in, like, 1700, and there are stores called Pawsitively Marblehead and Marblehead Munchies. I asked her if there was a Marblehead ‘n’ Stuff; she said no, but there is a Foodies Feast.
And just because I’m feeling whiny, I hate the word loaf.
Labels: Detroit, family, grammar, pop culture, sports, weather, work
