A Refresher on Perspective

Monday evening. The 23rd street platform of the N. Me, coming home from an industry holiday party, feeling stupid. One of those dumb, let's-get-a-bunch-of-actors,-agents-and-casting-directors-together-in-a-room-and-let-the-opportunities-floooow kind of contrived-ass shindigs. The exact kind of activity I tend to prefer even less than seeing how far up my forearm I can pull my hangnails. I actually get there and decide immediately that I can't deal. Too crowded, too many pretty folks, too much hoggida-hoggida about the business. Not even a coat check. The gal at the door knows my name for some reason and checks me off the list. Within 45 seconds, I fold completely. I turn right around and leave the joint in full social-anxiety meltdown mode. My mistake for going alone in the first place. Then feel obligated to go back in since I went all the way from work to Queens to walk the dog and back to the City just for this stupid thing. And I'm wearing a velvet blazer and my badass pointy black British mod shoes to boot. I go back in, buy a $7 Bass, carry it around for 20 minutes, bump into one person I know but who was headed to the other end of the party to meet some friends, wander around like an asshole some more, finish half my beer and leave.

So, now I'm standing on the platform - feeling lousy. Lousy that I wasted the evening, lousy that I couldn't at least try to hobknob a little and lousy that I was feeling desperate enough to try and go to this thing in the first fuckin' place. The usual friction between the artist and the guy trying to make a living from his art. You sort of have to play the game. Not in any particular way per se, but you have to at least play. And I feel like I can't bitch too heartily about not being where I want to be in my career if I'm not even willing to do the "Who Did Your Headshot?" dance from time to time. It's a pesky, narcissistic buzz that's humming around my head and as it's building to a crescendo, I see this little girl.

This impossibly cute little girl standing on the platform with her mother. Long sandy blonde hair, adorably beady little commas for eyes and when she talks, her S's whistle through the space where one of her bottom front teeth used to be. She's trying to open a package of Eclipse Lemon Ice gum - the kind that slides out of the cardboard sleeve and has the plastic front for you to punch the gum out through the foil-covered backing. Not too trying a deal for most kids, except this one's missing her right arm just below the elbow. And I'm standing there watching her try to do this.

She asks mom for ideas on how to get it open in a very matter of fact way, like it's a Rubik's or a Sudoku puzzle. Mom says she can't tell her how to do it because she doesn't know. She knows how she does it, but she's got both arms. The girl's got to figure out her own way. And she continues to try - no fuss - stoic and focused. Determined tongue poking out in an almost too on-the-nose impression of a Peanuts character. Prodding, fumbling, pressing it against her corduroy-panted leg, dropping it, trying to do it one-handed, trying to be as dextrous as she can with her chin, her nose, her left hand, her nub. This continues as the train comes and we all load on. Past 34th, 42nd, 59th. Finally at Queensborough Plaza, a sharp, half-stifled peel of laughter as she manages to smash the plastic against her half-arm and send a piece shooting into the crook of her bent knee. The gum at last. The Grail. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. And a lovely corner-smile of pleased self-satisfaction, also in a very Charles Schultzian manner. Mom puts her arm around her, gives her a casual and knowing squeeze. A corner-smile of her own. Partly because she's proud of her daughter for having the patience to figure it out and partly, it seems, because she's proud of herself for having the patience to let her daughter figure it out. And in the end, there's the bottom line. This girl now knows how to get that kind of gum out of that kind of packaging with half an arm. Something she didn't know at 23rd street, but now knows at Queensborough Plaza. Not just how, but that she can.

So, yeah. My bullshit anxieties about the state of my acting career based on one botched attempt at social networking were stuffed back in my face like Shaq blocking a jumper. Because I've never had to wonder how to open my gum.

This is a picture of her in action. Right before the moment of triumph.

Thanks, sister. Sometimes we need a little taste of perspective. And sometimes it tastes like Eclipse Lemon Ice gum.