Here I go again. It’s been a rainy Thursday in August. Everything is wet. Usually, everything has felt wet the past couple of weeks but today (and yesterday) it’s been wet. The sky is white with clouds obscuring Manhattan. Bill is off to the Hamptons, driving the elites from the Hudson Yards on the West Side out to Long Island, ending in East Hampton. I’ve never been.

I’ve never made it to Fire Island either. I saw Fire Island in the distance over 50 years ago on my Uncle Tommy’s boat. Sailing out from Babylon for a short trip with my father, my cousins, and more than likely my brother Brian. It was pointed out where Fire Island was and that was as far as I got.

Work has been odd. It was a job I started in June 2021 and it was a job I actually looked forward to going to five days a week. But things have gotten strange, the people I started with are no longer there. Friendly co-workers are no longer friendly. Still, I go in and do the best job I can.

There’s a group of women that work near me and we get along fine. But the rest, ugh. Humor, wit among other things are suspect and I find that they’re best avoided. But me being me and having that mouth of mine…

I was helping a client and getting them some water. I declared myself the water boy and then joked about having 2 atoms of hydrogen and 1 atom of oxygen. That might have made someone uncomfortable and could add another strike to the two I already have. I mentioned that to a co-worker and she remarked that those strikes would eventually go away. I had never heard that before and I still don’t believe it.

I feel like Sisyphus pushing that rock up the hill with the sword of Damocles over my head. If I said that aloud it might raise some eyebrows and signal to the umpires that that third strike could be imminent. “John said he wanted to throw rocks and swing a sword around” some twenty-something would probably say as it alerted the authorities.

My once-admired supervisor took what that particular twenty-something as gospel truth and included it in my mid-year review. It’s funny how these people who supervise do not get reviewed by the people who work underneath them. Now that would be a review worth posting. When they announced the mid-year reviews I almost replied just that, when will we get to review the supervisors? It was the rare instance where I did not react.

I once again have the idea to write about the jobs that I’ve had. I did try that once a few years ago and posted exactly one story about my first job. I was shot down by one of the two regular readers I had, the one not related to me, the male one. If I remember correctly, he called it boring and uninteresting which wounded me and I did not proceed. But the idea is still there and I don’t think Harry will read it anyhow.

Debbie Natale sat on the Path train in the middle of a one-sided conversation on her smartphone. It was loud and annoying. For at least 3 minutes she rattled off useless information to the other end of the phone and for the dozen people situated around her. Debbie Natale was looking a bit haggard these days, looking like the other side of 30 rather than the creeping 27-year-old she actually was.

I was annoyed by the scene, the sound of her voice but what was worse was when a busker came on board the Path train car. His guitar was strung over his back and he didn’t even strum a string. But Debbie Natale locked eyes on him and got off her phone, immediately telling the busker ‘No.”

There are never any buskers on the Path train. It’s a tightly run environment. No kids selling candy for their school sports teams either. These people can be found on the New York City MTA subway trains but not the Port Authority Trans Hudson line. I wouldn’t have minded the busker playing a tune but of course, that would have depended on what he was playing.

Debbie Natale was not having any of it. “No,” Debbie Natale said firmly and loudly again. This time she got the attention of almost everyone in that half of the Path train car. The busker had an idea she was talking to him, or rather talking at him. “No,” she said again not giving the busker a chance to even say anything much less sing anything. Most people have their earbuds or headphones on so they would not have heard anything anyway.

Finally, the busker was able to say something. “I’m not doing anyth-…” “NO! I don’t care! NO!” I said to the twenty-something kid sitting next to me that she didn’t seem to care about having us all listen to her phone call. He did not seem to hear me. The busker gave up and got out of the Path train car and Debbie Natale sat there smug like she was going to a maga rally.

The twenty-something kid next to me thanked her for doing what she did, saving the Path train car from a cover of ‘Hotel California’ or worse yet, ‘Don’t Stop Believin’” I guess I was of two minds, wanting to hear what the busker would play yet a bit anxious about what the busker would actually play.

If he was smart he would have sang ‘The Bitch is Back’ and dedicated it to Debbie Natale. But things being what they were he wandered off calling her a bitch under his breath. Debbie Natale victorious was a sight to see. Soon the train pulled into the final stop, Hoboken.

I got to the door as the Path train slowed to a stop. Debbie Natale was directly behind me anxious to climb the staircase to join the throng of young commuters forced into a bottleneck to go up that last staircase. I knew better and went the opposite direction where there was no one climbing the stairs alongside me.

Non Debbie Natale related post script- I deleted the blogroll that used to be on the right. I clicked a few blogs that I had listed and found that most of them had expired, one way or another. It seems that no one writes blogs anymore.

And here I am!