I Sing Because I Hate You

Happy Earth Day, Bloggi-trees! In honor of this environmental occasion, every joke made in today’s post will be absolutely, 100% recycled. (No one can say I didn’t do my part.)

And now, from Mother Earth to another “mutha”…

“Calm down! We’re all trying to get to the same place!” So spoke the mutha who cut me off in the frenzied mob of people climbing the stairs of Grand Central this morning, and then sauntered leisurely, leaving eleven hundred yards of space between her and the next guy when I began to jab my umbrella into her back fat. “Aaaaawwwwllllll trying to get to the same place,” she repeated slower and more jewishly to really seal her argument.

Um...Clearly, we’re not all trying to get to the same place, lady. You’re evidently trying to get to a lazy poolside shuffleboard game with Bubbie and Zadie. I’m trying to get to work during rush hour in Manhattan! Move ya bawllz!

I really wanted to let this woman have it, but really had no interest in listening any further to her side of the discussion. So, realizing I had my headphones on, I seized the opportunity and began singing (in loose rhythm and to a very vague melody) an impromptu song called “Move Your Slow Ass, Jewish Lady”. When she turned to give me a dirty look, I smiled and told her, “It’s the new Amy Winehouse.” She had nothing more to say.

This rhetorical ranting through song has become a new mechanism of mine. As a means of venting my frustrations for these irritants I encounter on a daily basis, I’ve taken to wearing my headphones everywhere I go – even when not listening to music. Headphones are a wonderful thing because they give us license to sing, talk, laugh or cry to ourselves without anyone passing judgment or feeling permitted to respond. In this day and age, people have been conditioned to automatically assume that the large ethnic man walking past them down the street, cursing rhythmically, is listening to the latest from his favorite rap artist; or that the dork in the suit, yapping a mile a minute, is talking shop to some other dork in a suit on the other end of the line; or that the impatient homosexual trying to get to work and singing crude lyrics to nasty, slow-paced Jewish women is just into sassy, drug-addicted female Pop/Rock music transfers from the UK. Little do they know…

I used to wear the headphones strictly to shut out the world around me. But I now realize it’s also a great way to put my two cents in without getting any “change back”, if you catch my drift. Some might think it kooky, but I find it the perfect solution for those big-city urbanites who, like me, are generally non-confrontational yet still enjoy the perks of telling people what they think of them. Try it sometime!