I like to think I’m as observant as the next person. For example, when we took someone to the airport recently, I noticed several areas, both inside and outside the building, that had been cordoned off with yellow “Caution” tape.
I also noticed that neither the elevator nor the escalator was running, and we had to walk all the way across to the other side of the building to get upstairs. That sort of thing gets my attention.
But it wasn’t until we got home and watched the news that night that someone put one and one together.
“Hey, Judy,” said my husband, “isn’t that the building we were in, today? JFK Terminal 4? There’s a story on the news about how there was a huge baggage snafu from that recent blizzard, and then a burst water pipe, but they finally got it all under control, except for one elevator that still isn’t running.”
I knew there was something “off” about that elevator! As for the blizzard and the baggage problem … well, anyone could have missed that.
It reminds me of a passage by one of my favorite writers, Robert Benchley:
“I know that if I were on the spot during any important historical event I would not know about it until I read the papers the next day. I am unobservant to the point of being what scientists might call ‘half-witted.’ It isn’t that I don’t see things, but that I don’t register them.”
You see? It could happen to anybody.
Benchley continues. “I could have been an usher in Ford’s Theatre in Washington, and wondered why the curtain was rung down so early; but on going home, I would have been pretty sure to report a routine evening to the family. ‘They didn’t finish Our American Cousin tonight,’ I might have said. ‘Some trouble with the lights, I guess.’ ”
I’m sure I could give Robert Benchley a run for his money.
Take that evening, years ago, when my parents came through New York City on their way home from a trip to Israel and took me out to a dinner.
My dad loved steak, so I had picked out a classic steakhouse spang in the middle of mid-town. Traffic was fierce — as usual — and I braced myself for complaints about the cabbie’s driving from my folks. But apparently, it all seemed very tame to them. “Oh, this is nothing,” my father laughed. “You should have seen the way they drive in Jerusalem!”
And as our cab pulled up to the door, I was afraid my parents would be shocked by the price of the ride. But my mother was already busy marveling about something else.
“Would you look at that!” she exclaimed. All up and down the block, the sidewalk was practically lined with New York City cops! They were all in uniform and just standing there like movie extras, every 10 feet or so, both ways to the corner from the restaurant’s door.
“I know this is a big city, but I have never felt so safe,” my mother remarked.
I had no idea what was going on, but you know how it is when your parents come to visit — if they’re happy, you’re happy. So we went in and had our dinner. My Dad’s steak was just the way he liked it; the bill came, he paid, and we cabbed back to my shoe-box apartment.
A few days later, I heard there had been a big-deal police raid on a “massage parlor” in mid-town. When I finally read the story in the papers, I noticed that it was at a very similar address to that for the steakhouse. “I wonder if it’s on the same block?” I asked myself.
But it wasn’t until my parents were safely back home in Maryland that I put two and two together, and figured out, “Oh, so that’s what all the police were doing on the street that night; they were just about to raid the place upstairs!”
Like I always say: You can’t get much by me. I’m as observant as the next person…if the next person is Robert Benchley.
