Meandering

Today we went to J+R Music World to buy a new computer, to Chinatown to buy a new 25 pound bag of rice and Shopsin’s for the best breakfast in town. While I was waiting for breakfast to commence and Jennifer to arrive I watched people walk around and listened to melodramatic Mariachi music and grouchy old Cubans yell at each other as they discussed the decline of the Yankees and the low quality of business on the Lower East Side. Chinese people that were able to walk on their own carried bags of uncrushed popcans from their early morning scouring of the streets. Older Chinese who could no longer walk by themselves were escorted by their middle aged children some of whom carried multiple plastic bags and still managed to do their morning hand exercises. New York on a Saturday morning is an interesting place to be when the sun shines and people slow down just a little bit. But it’s still a little too crazy I think -- too limited by time and space; too much grease and grime soaked into the pavements and our brains.

Shopsin’s is a great little restaurant with weird and eccentric rules and 25 different kinds of pancakes and its own movie. But even there, where everyone is family, the workers who are a dad and brothers and sisters in grubby aprons yell at each other when they get stressed. We got our new shiny computer after some convincing by a South Asian salesman and a little pathetic resistance. The customer service person at J+R Music World sits behind bulletproof glass. Jennifer reminds me that our new computer cost only two days work. But I told her it would take three years of manual labor for a Haitian.

We wandered home through a pink parade of breast cancer supporters and survivors. Jennifer had to do her greenmarketing by herself because I was too tired by the time we got home. I dreamed of heaven: where dogs bark silently, computers never die and Chinese is the linga franca: understood by everyone above the age of 3.

It was nice that Jennifer got up early on a Saturday to go out for breakfast with me. She doesn’t even like breakfast. She’s the best wife I ever had. I think I would go crazy without her. She keeps me honest and reminds me that there are still impossibly good people in the world. Erwin McManus says that most of the time when God speaks to him, He sounds a lot like himself. The only time God uses another voice is when he does something wrong. Then God sounds like his wife. I think that’s pretty much true. It was this week.

Do you think James Dobson will run for president?