Thursday, September 22, 2005
Faster than Others
Well Hanna, you’ve finally done it! At last you’ve selected a topic that thwarts my imagination.
I struggled for ideas and rejected one after another.
I can’t again use Rosie Ruiz and her Marathon performances. (Incidentally, she remains my hero, or should that be heroine?)
I thought of torturing the word ‘faster’ telling the story of Kafka’s "The Hunger Artist." Here was a man who had to deny his art by eating to stay alive so he could practice his art of starving himself.
Then I thought of the word ‘other.’ I suppose I could make the case that a calf’s milk delivery system from a bottle is ‘faster than udders.’ (Are there no depths to which I will not descend?)
Having taken you so low, there’s nowhere to go but up, so I thought it might be nice to elevate you with a story of English royal protocol and my morning with Prince Philip.
My telephone rang. It was during August of 1970 and I was on vacation. My boss at Bloomingdale’s was calling to tell me that I had to come to work next Wednesday morning.
Queen Elizabeth and her entourage were about to visit New York and her schedule called for her to spend a morning touring the store. This was something she really did not want to do, but was pressured into by the bigwigs at Waterford and Wedgewood. Bloomingdale’s loved to wangle any opportunity for free publicity.
The Queen’s itinerary included fashion shows at several of the designer shops, as well as stops in the cosmetics area, where secrets are revealed that I expect never to understand.
Clearly, Price Philip needed his own itinerary. It was said that he was interested in electronic gadgets, and I, as the store’s electronics guru, was called in to conduct his tour.
Now for your lesson in royal protocol.
The Queen must always exit her vehicle from the right side and must never be obliged to cross the street. Therefore, Lexington Avenue, usually going downtown, was, for the day, switched to uptown.
The Prince’s tour was required to finish before the Queen’s because she must never be required to wait for him. And he hated waiting for her. So the timing of both tours had to be exquisitely coordinated.
I met him at the store’s entrance, shook hands, and quickly learned that he had no interest in anything I had to show him or anything I had to say.
Luckily, we stumbled on something that did hold his interest. As the tour began, a string of young female trainees and assistant buyers began trailing after us, resembling the tail of a kite. His interest was in stopping to eye them hungrily up and down and to banter with them. This gave me the flexibility to manipulate him to the rendevous point with the Queen in plenty of time without his noticing. At tours end, he was smiling, while she was grumpy as Grumpy.
They exited at Third Avenue, which, of course, was switched to downtown for the day, enabling the Queen to enter her vehicle from the right.
So his entourage was finished ‘faster than the others’, which is as close as I can come to this week’s topic.
I struggled for ideas and rejected one after another.
I can’t again use Rosie Ruiz and her Marathon performances. (Incidentally, she remains my hero, or should that be heroine?)
I thought of torturing the word ‘faster’ telling the story of Kafka’s "The Hunger Artist." Here was a man who had to deny his art by eating to stay alive so he could practice his art of starving himself.
Then I thought of the word ‘other.’ I suppose I could make the case that a calf’s milk delivery system from a bottle is ‘faster than udders.’ (Are there no depths to which I will not descend?)
Having taken you so low, there’s nowhere to go but up, so I thought it might be nice to elevate you with a story of English royal protocol and my morning with Prince Philip.
My telephone rang. It was during August of 1970 and I was on vacation. My boss at Bloomingdale’s was calling to tell me that I had to come to work next Wednesday morning.
Queen Elizabeth and her entourage were about to visit New York and her schedule called for her to spend a morning touring the store. This was something she really did not want to do, but was pressured into by the bigwigs at Waterford and Wedgewood. Bloomingdale’s loved to wangle any opportunity for free publicity.
The Queen’s itinerary included fashion shows at several of the designer shops, as well as stops in the cosmetics area, where secrets are revealed that I expect never to understand.
Clearly, Price Philip needed his own itinerary. It was said that he was interested in electronic gadgets, and I, as the store’s electronics guru, was called in to conduct his tour.
Now for your lesson in royal protocol.
The Queen must always exit her vehicle from the right side and must never be obliged to cross the street. Therefore, Lexington Avenue, usually going downtown, was, for the day, switched to uptown.
The Prince’s tour was required to finish before the Queen’s because she must never be required to wait for him. And he hated waiting for her. So the timing of both tours had to be exquisitely coordinated.
I met him at the store’s entrance, shook hands, and quickly learned that he had no interest in anything I had to show him or anything I had to say.
Luckily, we stumbled on something that did hold his interest. As the tour began, a string of young female trainees and assistant buyers began trailing after us, resembling the tail of a kite. His interest was in stopping to eye them hungrily up and down and to banter with them. This gave me the flexibility to manipulate him to the rendevous point with the Queen in plenty of time without his noticing. At tours end, he was smiling, while she was grumpy as Grumpy.
They exited at Third Avenue, which, of course, was switched to downtown for the day, enabling the Queen to enter her vehicle from the right.
So his entourage was finished ‘faster than the others’, which is as close as I can come to this week’s topic.
