A local brewery named itself “Bad Tattoo”, a good description of far too many skin decorations.
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Saturday Night at the Big Y
Saturday Night at the Big Y
When the lights went out in New York during the great northeast blackout of 1965, I was browsing with a friend at Georg Jensen, an upscale Madison Avenue shop. All us shoppers held hands, and in single file we groped our way out to the dark street. (See Aunt Miriam, Diva)
And some years later I was in a movie theater when suddenly I smelled smoke. We were told to evacuate and we all hurried out post-haste. And more than once at Jane Addams High School in the Bronx where I taught for many years the principal ordered the building evacuated after a bomb threat . (For more about Jane Addams see The Diary of a Young Girl, Magazines for the Principal, The Parking Lot Seniority List, and Educator of the Year; Remembering Milton)
Then incredibly in 2012 when Hurricane Sandy made landfall in New York, we were ordered to leave our apartment building after the basement was flooded knocking out the gas and electricity. (See Cooking with Gas)
And recently I was ordered to evacuate a building once again.
We were expecting friends for Sunday brunch in the country and I planned to shop for what I needed on Saturday. But the weather was glorious that day, and knowing our local Big Y supermarket is open every night until 10, I procrastinated my shopping and didn’t leave for the supermarket until after 6.
All started out well – I got a parking space in the Big Y lot near the shopping cart station, I remembered to bring my shopping list, and even remembered to bring my reusable bags. (Unfortunately I did forget an umbrella.)
Once in the store I walked up and down the aisles filling my cart and crossing items off my list. But just as I got to the checkout line, I heard the alarm and then the announcement.
“Attention shoppers! Leave the store immediately! The fire alarm has sounded and although there is no smoke or evidence of fire, according to Fire Department protocol the building must be evacuated.”
And so I abandoned my shopping cart, and with hundreds of my fellow shoppers I headed for the exits . Then once in the parking lot I found myself in a torrential rainstorm – with no umbrella.
Very wet, and with none of the groceries I’d gone for, I drove home. Later I called the Big Y to ask what had happened, and was told fortunately it had been a false alarm. Early the next morning I went back with my shopping list.
Although stressful to some degree, and certainly inconvenient, all my evacuations were safe and relatively orderly.
But what nerve to evacuate the Big Y on a Saturday night when I had guests coming for bagels and lox on Sunday morning!
– Dana Susan Lehrman
Modern Primitives from the gay 90’s
In San Francisco in the early 90’s it seemed like everyone from lawyers to street punks was getting pierced and tattooed. "Body Modification" was the buzzword with tattoo and piercing shops as ubiquitous as Starbucks. Above a popular sex club sat a large school to train would be piercers.
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Waiting Rooms
My earliest experiences with waiting rooms were rather non-existent. That is to say, at 3, my parents rushed me to the ER when my pinky finger was tightly lodged in the fold of a folding chair. I remember the extraordinary pain and leaving with a splint on the finger. If I waited, I know it wasn’t long because it would, for me, have been memorable. When 4, I remember arriving on time to my pediatrician’s office, which was in his home, and was immediately ushered into the exam room. Later, at 8 or 9, while visiting cousins in Toledo, my stomach erupted in fierce pain and so was taken to the ER. If I had to wait while in extraordinary pain, I know I would have remembered. What I recall is being taken in immediately and leaving promptly, and thankfully, in good health.
Fast forward to now. Waiting is the epitome (or embodiment) of passivity. Who’s to say the venerable Triage nurse has aptly assigned patients according to their need, or correct appointment time? People, let’s take back our power. How about converting the waiting room into a game of musical chairs. Someone starts a tune on their smart phone and all the waiters rush to sit in a chair before the tune stops. Inevitably, someone will be left standing. Let the loser be the winner and he or she gets to go in first.
The world’s gone crazy, why shouldn’t the waiting room follow suit?