On this second day of Funemployment 2.0, the guests have left, the tour guiding is done, and I am left to contemplate what I want to do or not do over the next few weeks until I start my new job in January. Trying to be a good partner, I volunteered to help out with day shift breaks for Miss Dog, because Cohabituer has to do it 99.9% of the time. It is 1:30 PM on a random December Tuesday and it’s time to be humbled by picking up another being’s fecal matter.
Wanting to turn back mid-block, Miss Dog resists my attempts and sets her sites on the park ahead. I passively tell her, though she is now deaf, “Okay, whatever you want.” I do not have anywhere to be so why make a fuss about going back so quickly? A couple delivery workers bustle about on their daily parcel delivering routine around us, otherwise it’s a pretty light traffic day since it’s midday on a weekday.
Whilst clutching a green bag of dog shit in my hand, leash in the other, this Joaquin Phoenix looking guy pulls on his bicycle with the most neon highlighter yellow jacket, basic cap, and grayed pandemic grown out hair peeking out from underneath to ask, “Do you like global warming?”
Somewhere between giving him an all clear on the threat assessment and wrangling my pup, I became possessed by the spirit of Paris Hilton. Without processing what was happening I replied in a slightly dragged out Paris voice, “I love it” and just kept walking like I was over-pretending on what I think an heiress would walk like with her little dog. The difference is I’m in an old tee shirt, three-quarter leggings, flip flops, with a rat nest bun on a 50 degree day, so there is no regality to lean upon in this situation.
After I heard what I replied, I thought to myself, no I don’t, I don’t like global warming. But my subconscious apparently felt no need to explain myself. I suppose I was already fisting a crap bag, I didn’t need to step into his mansplaining pile he was about to heap at me about plastic bags or methane producing waste in landfills. I was using the same green poop bags every other dog owner is carrying around the city.
I can only speculate that is what he was going to tell me because I didn’t stay to listen. Dude is probably as confused by this as I am. I glanced back over my shoulder and he was taking his bicycle into his townhouse so I guess that ended this now weird exchange quicker than anticipated. That’s truly the mark of becoming a New Yorker. Can you out crazy the crazy? Can you level up on weirdness? But more so do you understand people will talk at you but you aren’t responsible for participating? Paris didn’t come to volley, Paris return spiked his close-ended question right into the ground at his feet and that is that. I out New Yorked a New Yorker.
Honestly, I cannot take credit for this response. I cannot say where it came from or why or how. I am as confounded as he must be, except I suspect I find it much more hysterical. Now I am walking around my apartment cooing, “I love it.” Because the outcome? I really love it.
All I have to say is Joaquin, zero. Paris, one.
New York Nobody 