POB (partner of blogger) had a great idea this morning — go to Governor’s Island for a picnic.  Governor’s Island is a decommissioned military base island in New York harbor (right next to Ellis Island and Liberty Island) that has been turned into a park and fairground.  It is an easy subway ride followed by a ferry ride.  Ok, “easy” refers only to the directness of the route.  When on the subway or in line for the ferry, a person is subject to the sea of surrounding humanity and their insipid conversations.  (For the record, our (i.e., this blogger community) conversations are never insipid — too revealing? Maybe. But insipid? Never.)

First, there was a more-unsteady-than-elderly lady for whom POB gave up her seat.  (I was already standing.) POB asked if she wanted a seat and the woman turned to her friend and said, in a cartoonishly nasal voice, “Oh, see!! A seat opened up!!”  Poof, like, magic.  Really?  No, because a well-mannered person got up (in contradistinction to the mopes and slouches around us).  Her friend started to talk about food processing in a loud, screeching voice.

What the woman said was important and true — that if you saw how fast food is made, you would never eat it again and that most processing is bad for humans in both nutrition and the environment — but did we need to hear it in outrageous volume with a holier-than-thou tone at 11am on a holiday weekend?  And, just across the aisle, a scary-looking, tattooed dad with a beer gut (who was playing with his child by pretending to strangle him — really) was giving the child huge helpings of Pepperidge Farm flavor-blasted gold fish (hmmm, salt, chemically reconstructed “cheese” and polysorbate 60, anyone?).  Our son loves them, too, and we know we are going to a special place in hell for parents who let their kids eat this junk.  None of the kale or broccoli or grass-fed beef that our son eats will save us from this punishment.

And why DO men need to sit so wide that they take up nearly two seats?  I note that the smaller the shoe size of the man, the wider he sits.  Is this some psychological melodrama playing out?

Fast-forward to the line waiting to get back on the ferry to Manhattan.  A group of women and one man was behind us.  The man, who was overweight, and a bitchy effete garden gnome, was commenting to women passersby, “hey, do you think you could have tighter clothing?” or “do you think you could be any fatter?”  All I wanted to say to him was, “come out of the closet and stop being bitter with baggage”.  But I didn’t.  I could take him down in a minute.  The women, however, would lay me out.  One of the women had a son who was going to grow up to be the bully of his neighborhood.  He dropped a juice carton on the street and someone picked it up and handed it to her and said, “I think your child dropped this.”  I thought it was an elegant way to force the woman to deal with the litter.  She got all huffy, with heavy hip and neck action, saying to her friends, “the baby drops this and he gives it to me?” Ok, who else?  She is his mother for G-d’s sakes.  And the baby?  BABY?  Try 6 years-old, going on 12.  And mean.

Too much humanity.  I wanted to take a private water taxi followed by a cab.  I couldn’t handle any more.  But we did continue on the public transportation route.  On the subway, three 20-somethings were talking and POB and I were transfixed by the car wrecks that were their conversations and their outfits.  One was falling out of her skimpy outfit and had used eyebrow pencil to highlight her auburn eyebrows into a Groucho Marx effect.  I think she thought I was admiring her instead of not being able to take my eyes off this mobile crashing unit, so when she got off, she shimmied at me and smiled.  I was sooooooo grossed out I could barely breathe.

I took to my bed for a nap.  Oh, I forgot, once you get to Governor’s Island, it is perfectly lovely.