Wednesday, February 08, 2006

Why so many people don't like New Yorkers...and why it's not the New Yorkers' fault

This is a short segue away from the Basic Training chronicles to a topic that I've had occasion to think about since I've been living up a dirt road in the boonies instead of New York City.

My daughter, who has lived in Chicago for more or less the last decade, brought the topic up the other night when she commented that when people in the midwest ask her where she is from, and she tells them, accurately, that she spent her first 12 years in New York City and then moved to Connecticut, they look at her like she has a communicable disease. A very unpleasant communicable disease, in fact. One might almost say a loathsome communicable disease!

A few years ago, up here in Northwest Connecticut, there was considerable hue and cry about how the New Yorkers were ruining the place. How they talk loud, how they aren't polite, how they are willing to spend too much money for a house (as well as for almost anything else), how they try to get ahead in line, how they, well, fail to show proper deference to people who have lived here for years and years.

That talk largely died out -- perhaps as more and more people around here benefitted financially from the influx of New Yorker second homes -- but came to life again a few years ago on the topic of cellphones (which, by the way, don't work in most of our area because there are very, very few cell towers) and how New Yorkers talk too loud on them. At least where they can use them at all.

For many years I had thought of the anti-New Yorker sentiment as anti-semitism. However, having heard the same kinds of antipathy expressed toward newcomers from New York City by locals of all ethnic and religious persuasions, and having seen my co-religionists (Episcopalian, for the information of any who are curious) exhibiting all the same behaviors "locals" have historically considered distasteful, I decided a while ago that anti-semitism was a simplistic explanation and have been reflecting further on it. (In fact, some of the most obnoxious people I have ever met have been, like me, Episcopalian, and some of the most obnoxious of this group have NOT been New Yorkers at all. But I won't go there right now.)

First of all, I do think that there are a set of behaviors that tend to characterize many people who have lived in New York City for much of their life -- or at least for the most recent few years. They don't stand out in New York City, but up here, where there still are occasional dirt roads, they do seem noticeable.

I think that what makes a New Yorker a New Yorker is cultural. Yes, there is a heavy component of self-selection involved (I think that when the few people from the red states who decide to live in New York City make that decision it must be about as earth-shattering as if they were to come out of the closet -- and it does take a certain amount of guts coupled with the feeling that the present situation is intolerable to make either decision, I suspect.) but when you move to New York City you move into an environment that I have not seen elsewhere.

Most places the overwhelming social pressure is to conform to local norms. Social success most places in this great nation comes to those who are beautiful, athletic, and have the ability to parrot the local social, political, religious, and economic viewpoints so inoffensively that, were they not beautiful and athletic, they would be totally invisible.

In New York City, as long you are not striving to be a model or a prostitute or be picked up in bars without wasting time trolling around, nobody much cares if you are beautiful or athletic at all. In fact, nobody really cares at all about what you think unless it directly threatens them.

But what everyone in New York City does care about is what you want from them, or what you have that they want.

In what is fundamentally a rather small and crowded place, there is no time that one lives in New York City that someone else does not want what you have.

If you have a job in a large corporation and sit at a desk in the middle of a sea of desks, there are people who do not have jobs at all, or who do not have jobs that are as well-paid as yours who actively covet your job. If you sit in a cubicle, there are people out there in the bullpen who want more than anything else in the world to sit in a cubicle -- in YOUR cubicle.

If you have an office with walls that reach the ceiling and a door that opens and closes, there are people sitting in cubicles who want your office. If your office has a window, there are people with inside offices who want your office. If your office has a window and is on a high floor, there are myriad people who have offices on lower floors who want to move up.

If you have industrial carpeting on your office floor, there are people with linoleum tile or raised floors who want to sit where you sit. If your office flooring is a cut above industrial carpet, there are many, many people who want what you have.

If you are standing on the subway at rush hour and the door opens, there are people on the platform who want the 48 square inches of floor you are occupying. If you are sitting on the bus, there are people standing right in front of you who want your seat. If you are riding in a taxi, there are the people on the curb who want your cab. If you are in a limo, there are people in all the other modes of transportation who want to be sitting right where you are sitting, even if it is motionless in traffic.

If you live in a 12 room duplex coop on Park Avenue, there are many, many people who want your living place. If you have a rent stabilized two bedroom, ditto. If you have a studio that you can afford, ditto. Furthermore, your landlord is among the population that wants your apartment, and is apt to be among the more vicious of those trying to get it.

If you are reaching for a quart of milk at the grocery store, there is someone else in that store at that very moment that covets that quart of milk.

It translates to intangibles as well. I won't belabor the obvious in terms of competition for recognition at work or for promotion. The competition for the scarce spaces in most Manhattan nursery schools is legendary, as are the spaces in the ongoing schools, both private and public (remember, please, that New York City has a hierarchy of public schools that parallels the private sector, and in which the competition is just as bloodthirsty.)

It's natural, in an environment where the sharks are continuously circling, that people feel a need to celebrate their survival.

This leads to conversations salted with mentions of what a person has, and frequently what they have gotten most recently. My wife still recalls a woman she met 25 years ago at our daughter's nursery school who introduced herself by telling my wife that she and her husband had a 12 room duplex on Park Avenue. Both of us have long since forgotten her name, but we both can still refer to her as "12 room duplex" and know exactly who we are referring to.

"My girl will call your girl" to set up a meeting is such an egregious boast (not only that you actually have a secretary or admin assistant -- a rarity anymore -- but also that you are so important that you do not need to abide by conventions -- and laws -- about sex roles) that one almost never hears it anymore. (If fact, the legal ramifications are such that someone who says it is weakening himself competitively. Thus, it isn't much said.)

It's dangerous for people who work for you to know powerful people, even if the powerful people your people know could actually help you. As it turns out, I met and had lunch one Sunday with Archbiship Desmond Tutu at a time when my employer was having problems not only with opening branches in South Africa, but also was attempting to deal with redlining issues in its New York City business. I was certainly in a position where I could have reached him on the telephone, and possibly have gotten an appointment with him for someone higher up in the corporation. When I mentioned this to the guy I was working for at the time, he reacted with visible horror. He immediately realized that I appeared to have a resource that emphatically trumped any resource he could muster, and he very quickly shifted me to projects where Archbishop Tutu could not be even remotely relevant. He was simply defending what he had.

People in New York City routinely work mind-numbing hours. The reason is not that they have more work to do than people in Peoria, but that any time they are not at their desk, or visibly incurring expenses on behalf of their employer, someone else could be cutting into their game.

Do you currently have a parking space that will permit your car to remain in situ through the next alternate side parking day? Well, don't move it, even for a moment. Someone else wants your parking place, and will take it in a heartbeat.

Got a subscription for a couple of really good seats at the opera or the ballet? Going to be away for the next season? Don't be a fool and let your subscription lapse even if you cannot attend a single performance. You will never, ever get seats as good again.

Got someone to clean your apartment who is honest, a hard worker, and shows up like clockwork? Have a friend who needs someone to clean their apartment? You're a fool if you even let your friend know you have such a resource -- they will find a way to hire that resource away from you.

Eternal vigilance is the price of holding on to what you have in New York City.

Honestly, anyone who can live for an extended period in New York City and not adapt to the cultural mores is either an insensitive fool or a saint -- and actually, most insensitive fools are able to catch on rather quickly.

From here, up a dirt road, I can't really take a particularly critical view of New Yorkers. They have earned their sharp elbows.

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

Live fire exercises

It does seem like Basic Training is easier to recall in reverse chronological order.

What I suppose was "the" highlight, at least for some of us, was the live fire exercise, which came in the final few days of basic. The essence of it was that in this one people would actually be shooting at you. Or at least shooting at where you would be if you happened to stop crawling and suddenly stand up.

During the days that preceded it, there was much discussion among the basic trainees about just how close to a standing position you would have to get in order to acquire a machine gun round in the butt or head. Many theories were postulated. Some felt that the bullets would be coming over us at about 18 inches above the ground, and that as long as one stayed under the barbed wire we were crawling under, one would be fine. Others felt the bullets were about 3 feet up, so that if someone panicked and decided to get out on hands and knees, barbed wire notwithstanding, they would be safe. Another school of thought was that the bullets would be about six feet up, so that if someone panicked and decided to try to run out, they would be okay if the ran in a slight crouch.

One thing we all knew was that the live fire exercise was intended to come as close to what one might have found on a World War II battlefield at night (maybe a World War I battlefield, in no man's land, really) as was possible without destroying too much government property (meaning too many recruits).

Actually, by the time we had gotten to the live fire exercise we had already taken a certain amount of physical risk in the live grenade exercise, but I'll talk about that later.

As with many of the components of basic training -- and a good reason why no politician who has not been through it should EVER be permitted to vote on a resolution about war -- the live fire exercise was intended to be both instructive and psychologically supportive, while at the same time putting combat into some kind of perspective.

My recollection of the actual exercise was this:

First, it was night, and it was definitely dark out. They marched us a few miles, in the dark, of course (my father had an amusing anecdote from World War I about one National Guard division in France that carried flashlights while marching at night, and how they acquired the derisive nickname of the "flashlight division" from that episode). Of course this was not our first night march, and they have a beneficial quality all their own.

We arrived in an area of Fort Gordon where none of us could remember having been before -- and we had walked all over (or what seemed to constitute all over) that post in the preceding weeks (I can honestly say that the only times we rode anywhere in basic training was when we were going on or off post). Being in new territory at night, knowing there is going to be something really scary happening soon, has a certain effect on one.

Then, we waited. "Hurry up and wait" is a critical part of the basic training experience, and the way people deal with having to wait is frequently a good indication of whether they have been through basic or not. I attribute some of the decline in civility in America to the huge reduction in the number of American males who have been subjected to the patience-building process of basic training. But let it suffice to say that when you hurry up and wait for something genuinely scary to happen, the overall effect is magnified.

Then, out of the night, what seemed like 50 feet from us, with no warning at all, there was an explosion (actually, probably a 105 simulator, and most likely in a pit surrounded by sandbags for safety reasons). Then, some machine guns opened up with a few bursts, but not in our direction.

Finally, we were directed single-file into a trench -- a fairly deep one, probably reminiscent of a World War I trench. From where we were, we could see machine guns above us, firing tracers ahead of where we were pretty clearly going.

Then, we were told to get moving, to stay down under the wire, and good luck.

I seem to remember being in roughly the second wave that crawled out of the trench and into the field, under the machine gun tracers. That would make sense, since my name was Brown, which put me alphabetically in the third squad of the first platoon of the basic training company.

I was barely out of the trench when a 105 simulator went off considerably closer than the preceding one. It was a good reminder to keep my head down.

There are really two ways to crawl under barbed wire: on your belly (like a snake, as the sergeants used to point out), and on your back. When you low-crawl on your belly, you cradle your rifle in your elbows. When you crawl on your back, you lay your rifle on top of you with the muzzle somewhere near the top of your head. You can crawl much faster on your belly (in fact, the 40 yard low crawl was a timed portion of the Army PT test) than on your back, but you are a bit closer to the ground when you crawl on your back, because you aren't tempted to stick your head or your butt in the air.

I honestly cannot remember which way I crawled the hundred or so yards that the live fire exercise required. Probably a little of both. I do remember that the wire was probably as low to the ground as any we had encountered in basic, and I do remember bumping into a sandbagged area just as a 105 simulator went off in it, and reflexively rolling away from it, while feeling sand kicked up the the explosion falling on me.

I know that as I was reaching the end of the course, I did crawl for a while on my back because I remember watching the tracer rounds going over. My conclusion at that point was that they were about eight feet up -- in other words, the Army was not going to lose any recruits who might panic and stand up.

Finally, we got to another trench, crawled down into it, were told we could stand up now, and went over to the side, tracer rounds continuing to go overhead the whole time, and 105 simulators continuing to explode in the area behind us.

It would have been interesting to see the live fire course in daylight, but I'm sure that the psychological effectiveness of the exercise would have been greatly diminished had we done so.

Interestingly, there was virtually no conversation among us recruits either while marching back to the company area or after we arrived. Even the compulsive talkers had nothing to say.

Maybe I'll talk about gas or grenades next time.