Bruce the Blog

Playing with great relish the role of truculent network TV executive Arthur Jensen, actor Ned Beatty bellows across a forbidding boardroom slab of wood at posthumously-awarded Best Actor Peter Finch in the film classic “Network”: “You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won’t have it!! Is that clear?!” Later in his show-stopping diatribe, he says, “That is the natural order of things today.”

I have my own natural order of things, except I insist they also apply to others, not just to me. They include being a sensible, mature, well-mannered motorist who parks where there are parking spaces and puts on headlights when necessary so other cars can see mine because that’s one good reason God gave us headlights.

I don’t deny it’s an Obsessive Compulsion I possess — or am possessed by — one of several (”My name is Bruce and I’m an OCaholic”). It’s when people step outside of MY norm, which can mean something as seemingly inconsequential as parking outside of the yellow lines or parking inside the blue disabled parking lines without the requisite permit. This stuff, I am sorry to say, drives me batty. I’m sorry, that is, for the objects of my scorn, not for myself. I’m sorry they are Rudimentary People, to paraphrase the title of Judith Guest’s bestselling 1970s novel-into-film that won Oscars for Best Picture, for director Robert Redford, for supporting actor Timothy Hutton and for writer Alvin Sargent.

Rudimentary denotes something simple in the extreme, or in the first stages of development. It also can be seen as a slightly euphemistic, softer way to say, “rude.” That’s how I view the inconsiderates who park in the middle of driveways at public buildings, like the Starbucks in Yorktown, where I recently jawed at whom I don’t doubt was a very nice woman behind the wheel but whom thought nothing of planting her SUV in the driveway to effectively block those entering and prevent two cars from passing in opposite directions, as the driveway is designed to allow.

Such folks, without meaning to ostensibly, create disorder.

My disorder disorder includes cryptic voicemail messages that say nothing except, “call me,” or that, instead of telling me the topic of the call, waste the caller’s breath and my aural cavity on superfluous, gratuitous, hypothetical reasons about why I might be excused for not calling back (”deathbed,” anyone?).

Gee, thanks for the cheery thought, as well as for proscribing the acceptable limits of my behavior. Of course, I know the caller was jesting about the deathbed remark, but don’t forget, I’m talking about a disorder here on both ends, wherein humor is in the mind of the phoneholder.

My response to such rudimentary behavior as cryptic calls is simple: none. Am I being a big baby about it? That’s a definite probably. That’s what happens when an immovable brat meets an irresistible baby: stasis.

I ran into a rudimentary person of the third kind at food boutique Iron Tomato on Mamaroneck Avenue in White Plains Friday afternoon. My bosses Carla Chase, Frank Rich and I had just finished a very productive meeting with a Westchester County government official and went to grab lunch.

At cafeteria-style Iron Tomato, you first get your food, either from a deli counter or a shelf, pay for it, then find a table. There is no wait service. It was 1:00 p.m., high lunch time, and so three open seats together were scarce at first. When I spotted a couple of tables-for-four with only one person seated, I told Carla I would grab one of them while she finished the transaction and Frank was parking the car.

I approach a window-side table where a lovely young knitted-capped woman is reading a paperback and thoughtfully has her boots perched on the seat directly across from her and her coat draped on the chair next to her. As I quickly discovered, they really were symbological signs that read, “Stay Away.” That’s usually my cue to invade the space of someone so presumptuous to think they own a public space that is readily capacious and available to others as well.

“Anybody else sitting here,” I ask rhetorically and with a modicum of patience evident in my tone because I know her type, who also can be found on Metro North trains where a certain kind of rudimentary passenger thinks nothing of putting a briefcase on the seat next to him even during rush hour when seats are scarce, or doing the same with a piece of clothing, both of which belong on the overhead rack. That’s another case where I purposefully would take the seat occupied by a briefcase to make my point that such a person was not going to passively intimidate me into not sitting there. I’m not sure I ever said it, but I know I used to think to say to one of these beauts, “Maybe I should try to sit on the overhead rack so you can keep your briefcase on the seat.”

Miss Iron Tomato Paperback already is not suffering my presence gladly, to say the least. She fixes a kind of stare on my visage and actually says to me, “What do you want me to do about it?” The subsequent exchange was not at all pretty, but also not loud, although I peripherally noticed some patrons enjoying our ultimate bickering contest. She says I’m rude not to ask her permission to sit there. I reply, “I don’t think so.” She says she didn’t realize it was a “community table” (when in fact at a cafeteria, that’s exactly what it is). I ask if one person like her controls all four seats at the table and tell her I don’t need her permission to sit there. She says she sits there every day. I resist the urge to say, “Well, you’re the most convincing undercover security guard I’ve ever seen” and instead say, “Good for you.” She moves to another table rather than bearing to sit across from yours truly the rest of the time.

Both she and I make a mutual point of glaring at one another for good measure, both of us (I am convinced) trying strenuously not to let the inevitable subcutaneous smirk surface, because we both realize how ridiculous is the entire episode that just transpired.

As I take momentary leave of our newfound acquisition (being the table) to get some condiments, I see my new best friend going over to chat a bit with Carla, no doubt assuring her I’m the only one in our party she thinks is rude. Well, thank goodness for small favors.

When Paperback Polly is leaving, she says to Carla, “Nice talking with you.” I turn to her and say, “Have a nice day!” I was not being facetious. She understandably ignores me. I would too if I were her, but I’m not. I’m an old(er) guy who has learned once I vent, even to a stranger, life is too short not to quickly put it aside and get on with the niceties of existence, precious as they are. One day, I’m sure she’ll feel the same way. At least I hope she does. And I hope that day is today.