Burden of the Holiday Police

One night last week I dreamt that I was riding in a car with batman. Overall, it felt like an average experience. Remarkably lackluster, I guess. We weren't in the bat mobile. We were in a beige sedan and coasting along well within the speed limit.

And my sedan buddy wasn't Christian Bale or Michael Keaton. He was Adam West, the old school monochromatic batman. It felt as though we were in the middle of a long road trip, at a point long after conversations have subsided and the car's hum has calibrated itself to the frequency of the open landscape outside.

I thought of batman and the feeling this dream evoked two times in the two days that followed. The first time was after getting off of a packed elevator. It was Friday after work and people were anxious to get home. The elevator had stopped on most floors on the way down and there was a collective groan when it stopped on floor 2. Two people step on and a guy starts passive aggressively saying how "SOME people should KNOW how to use stairs."


This irked me and I told him to "relax" and pointed out that "it's the holidays." People started to chime in that maybe the most recent passengers didn't know where the stairs were and sardonic guy scurried away as soon as the elevator doors opened. Annoyed, I stepped into the cold a few seconds later and wondered if this was a sign that I'd be on happy holiday patrol this season. It felt like a responsibility I didn’t want to shoulder. Then I thought of Adam West driving with one hand loosely on the horn of the steering wheel.

The second incident occurred the next day, early evening. We went to the bus service that would take MJ to the airport. As we waited in line, a bus dropped off people and a Pakistani immigrant was frantically looking around for his missing bag. The bus driver started to yell at him to speak English and the dispatcher was equally unhelpful. I got really mad at this one and I donned my happy holiday patrol persona again. The immigrant just wanted to be heard and to know that they were aware of what happened.

As I heard the dispatcher raise his voice at him again to speak English, I told him that it was fucking obvious that the guy had lost his bag. I told him that he needed to take his contact info for when the person who mistakenly took his bag brings it back. The dispatcher got defensive and told me that this happens all the time. Bad nonsensical answer and I told him so. I managed to calm the immigrant down as he told me that all his possessions were in his bag in broken English. They eventually took his contact info but the incident put me in a foul mood for the rest of the day.

A few more of these types of incidents before Christmas and I'm going to have an aneurysm. Maybe that's where we were going, Batman and I -- away.