Rich Mintz  

I got home tonight after a long day — culminating in a schleppy ride downtown in a wet taxi with a (friendly and delightful) colleague — ready to collapse on the couch, and discovered at the door to my building that I’d locked myself out. This does happen from time to time, and the typical social economics of living in the city suggest that I probably have a friend or two who have spare keys to my apartment. I do, and was able to intercept one of them about two hours later, get the spares, and get into my place to discover that my keys were there safe and sound on the table. So, score one for “things might have been worse.”

I spent my enforced two-hour hiatus taking myself out to dinner around the corner at Les Halles — if I’m going to force myself to eat a dinner I’m not really in the mood for, it might as well be delicious — where I had the steak frites and two glasses of an excellent Long Island Merlot. It’s also worth noting that the music on the Les Halles Web site is so jazzy that I’m leaving the page open as I continue typing…

And I spent my dinner thinking over the lessons of the day — given that my iPhone died shortly after I sat down — which are, in order of importance:

Charge your damn iPhone, you idiot. I spend the entire day sitting at a desk upon which I wisely placed an iPhone charging dock back in the distant past. Why don’t I insert phone (a) into dock (b) as a matter of course at all times during which I am seated thereat? Idiot. And another thing…

Where’s your damn iPad? This morning as I was leaving for work, I thought to myself, “why carry the iPad? You won’t need it; you’ll be at your desk all day, then stopping by an event right after work (bonus plug: New York Council for the Humanities), and by the time you think to pick it up again, you’ll be home again.” Unless you WORK SO LATE YOU HAVE TO SKIP THE EVENT and then LOCK YOURSELF OUT OF YOUR APARTMENT. My briefcase already weighs a zillion pounds; I can’t handle a zillion and one point six pounds? And while I’m listing lessons…

When you get out of a taxi, get the damn receipt. Today I wore my “shallow pockets” pants to work, and it was very possible that my keys had fallen out of my pocket onto the seat of that aforementioned wet taxi. If they had, damned if I’d ever find them again without the cab number. The fact that I didn’t actually need that receipt isn’t a reason not to have taken it. Which leads to…

Don’t ever wear those “shallow-pockets” pants again. You bought them on sale for 30 bucks, they won’t be missed. Err in the direction of pants that have the proper keyring-protecting pocket dimensions. And while I’m on the subject of attire…

Those leather high-top Converse All-Stars might have looked sweet in the store. They might even look good on your feet. But any 11-year-old boy knows that the soles don’t grip in the rain. I took a spill on Duane Street, on a slick metal surface, that twisted my left leg under me so hard I half expected a bone to be sticking out of me like when Goldie Hawn and Meryl Streep fell down the stairs in Death Becomes Her.

I’m okay now. Of the mundane indignities that New York inflicts, there are very few that aren’t offset by a hot bath spiked with hotel-amenity body wash, accompanied by a very wet issue of The New Republic.

As this post is already starting to read like the transcript of a late-80s Howie Mandel comedy routine, I’ll stop here. But let (all) that be a lesson to you!

Tags: New York

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