Why I should probably be back in therapy.

I have a complicated relationship with supermarket cashiers. They’re serving me, and yet at the same time they have all the power—tallying my purchases, weighing and considering each item, silently judging me. I’m always a little mortified (I can hear them thinking, she pays that much extra for organic? chump) and yet also grateful because hey, they're letting me take this food home! I mean, I have to pay for it, but still. Mostly, though, I really want them to be nice to me. I’m not asking for much. A smile here, a “have a nice day” there. Sometimes the exchange with the cashier is the only adult interaction I’ll have all day. I want a little validation that I exist. Is that too much to ask?

At any rate, there’s a new cashier at the Met Food across the street, and this woman is One Cranky-Ass Bitch. She’s a middle-aged woman with badly dyed red hair and a thick Russian accent. She scowls at every item that rolls towards her, and then regards me with an icy stare and spits, “Give me $35.17,” like she’s mugging me. And oh, when I tell her I’m going to use my debit card! The sighing and the rolling of the eyes! “Cash back?” she growls, and then looks at me like god help you if you say yes. If she could get away with balling up the receipt and hucking it at my face, she would. She is not a nice person.

So of course I’ve been trying to make her my friend. I head straight for her cash register and I put each item down right where she can pick it up—no making that conveyor belt roll, my friend! That’s too much work for you! Then when she accosts me with the total I always beam at her and say, “Okay!” and I count out my money—exact change for you, neighbor! You’ve had a hard day! And then she shoves my receipt at me and my bag and I tell her to have a nice day and she hates me more than ever.

I went in on Saturday to buy a bag of potting soil. I had a hard time negotiating the bag, as it was big and heavy and I am small and puny. I plopped it down at her register and said, “Whoa!” because I’m a dork. She glanced at me to sneer, but then something changed in her expression—and she smiled at me. She. Smiled. At me.

Finally, I thought. I’ve broken through. She could only resist my charms for so long.

Of course I smiled like a crazy person back at her, and I handed her my money and she gave me my change and I shrieked “Thank you! Nice day, isn’t it! Hope you get outside! Bye! See you later!” at her. She looked right at me and she smiled again. I was in heaven.

When I walked in the door I was about to tell my husband about my breakthrough when he said, “Did you know that you’ve got something on your face? You’ve got a big black smudge under your nose.”

So. It wasn’t my charms, but my dirt mustache. Cranky-Ass Bitch was laughing at me. She was thinking, “The American whore looks like Hitler. And my heart is glad.”

I'm sort of considering doing it again, just to amuse her.

The Verdict

First of all: I had no idea so many people had such strong thoughts about the city vs. the suburbs. You all scare me a little, but it’s a good kind of fear. I love you. Don’t hurt me.

So this weekend we drove to the UNNAMED SUBURB in New Jersey. (I don’t know why I’m not revealing the location. Maybe I’m afraid their town council will read this and come to my home with pitchforks? Maybe I just like to be difficult?) We had time to kill before our realtor appointment, so we got some lunch and wandered around the village square. What can I say about it? It was a village square. There were Cute Shoppes, and Not-So-Cute Shoppes, and some people who looked like people we could be friends with, and then other people who were probably nice too except they looked maybe a little inbred, and I'm sure that's not their fault so I shouldn't judge but I don't want to live near them there I said it. (You’d think, the way I’m talking, that we live some kind of Prospect Heights: The Musical! existence, in which we do-si-do'd with our neighbors every time we went out to catch the train. Like there are no weird people in Brooklyn. Frankly this should be the borough’s motto. “Brooklyn: Where the weird people are at!” Except I think it’s something like “The borough that loves you back” or something equally creepy.)

As we looked about, our emotions were running high. “This town doesn’t make me want to kill myself as much as I thought it would! I think!” I would say. “If that home up there had a broken picket fence I would impale myself upon it immediately,” my husband would reply. And then we’d wander some more, and it would be my turn to despair. “Don’t make me live here,” I’d whisper, and by then Scott would be squeezing my hand and saying, “No! This could be okay! Look, I see a comic-book store!”

It was like that for a while. Then we met with the realtor, a lovely woman who showed us every single home that has ever been built, ever. Did you sense a presence in your home? Yeah, that was us. We wandered through homes for hours. We wanted to stop her but our will had been utterly broken and all we could do was trail along, nodding obediently at the charming details and original woodwork and whatever the hell else she told us to look at.

The first house was so small, it made me angry: not at the realtor, just at the house. It made me want to punch it. No house should be that small. I didn’t think it was possible to cut our apartment in half and put one half on top of the other and call it a house, but they did it. Stupid house.

After that things get a little blurry. Most of the houses were dark and squalid and just plain too small. Some houses were large enough and otherwise fine, except they screamed SOMEONE DIED HERE to me. Maybe I’m morbid. But when the furniture is from the ‘30s and the appliances are from the ‘20s and adorning the walls are gauzy photos of grandkids and 50th wedding anniversary photo collages and the place smells like talcum and cat pee, with something cloying and unwholesome underneath… well. It was all I could do to keep from running away and screaming PLEASE I WANT TO LIVE AGAIN. In one house Scott stood in a windowed nook in a bedroom and announced, “This is where the ghost watches you when you sleep.” So it wasn’t just me.

We saw more of the insides of people’s homes than we ever wanted to see. One place was rife with Christian paraphernalia downstairs, and had a tanning bed upstairs. (Hey, Christians can be tan, too! Why not!) One had many different signs announcing the family’s name: the Danglers. “The Danglers live here!” “Join the Danglers for a Dangler reunion!” “Dangle gently in the breeze, the Dangler way!”

Finally we escaped and drove back, exhausted and hysterical. We could do it! We told each other. We could live here and have a yard and go to the city whenever we wanted and some of those places weren’t so bad and maybe the ghost will be friendly! We don't really want to do it, do we? But we could! Yes! But then we went home, sat down, and looked at the cold, hard facts. Moving is expensive. Homes are expensive. And say all you want that city living is pricey, but friends, you suburbs people have expenses that have never occurred to us city folk: cars and insurance for cars and heating and garbage collection and whatnot. And we can barely afford our thrice-a-week burritos.

Once we realized that we just plain couldn’t afford it, my god, how happy we felt. You mean we get to keep living here? In Brooklyn, the City That Touches You Inappropriately? So this is where we should be. And here we’ll stay, for now. Maybe for a long while. The best part is that I can stop thinking about real estate. And my obsessing ends…now. No, now. Wait, no. Nnnnow.

I leave the tough decisions up to the Internet.

I can’t stop thinking about real estate, Internet. Specifically: should we stay in Brooklyn, or should we beat a shameful retreat to the suburbs? I need you to tell me.

We bought our two-bedroom apartment a few years back for a quarter and some old gum wrappers, and it is now worth billions. While this is lovely, it also means that if we hope to buy a larger space in our neighborhood—well, we can’t; it’s not even worth talking about. Our space is not quite large enough for us, and will definitely Not Work if we have another child (NO I’M NOT PREGNANT). With the crazy inflation of real estate prices in NYC, we will only be able to afford a lean-to on the banks of the Gowanus, and Henry and his imaginary sibling will develop extra limbs from all the fumes coming off of the fetid waters. So that’s probably not the best option.

So it comes down to this: either we stay in our place, which in addition to being on the small side is dark and loud (we’re on the first floor on a main avenue—in the summer people walk up to our window and ask for money. We’re like an ATM! An ATM for crazies!), or we move to an As Yet Unnamed Suburb. We’ve found a couple of areas that seem to suit our needs: we could probably afford a smallish house in one of these towns, which are close to the city and artsy/liberal. However (need I add this?) they’re Not Brooklyn. We would not have the library, the museum, the park, and the Botanic Garden all within a few blocks of our home. We would have to own a car (gasp!). On the other hand, we would have a backyard. And a decent school district. And amenities within walking distance. On the other hand I will be dead inside (probably). My youth gone, I will spend the days watching soaps and drinking Chardonnay; when Husband arrives from the city I will greet him at the door with pies made of Play-Doh and cigarette butts. Isn’t this what you suburban types do? Yes?

In a nutshell, I am driving myself bonkers. One moment I think I can never leave Brooklyn how could I even think such a thing and then in the next moment I’m dreamily picturing mornings with Henry and Scott in a sunny breakfast nook instead of our dank living room/dining room/kitchen that is periodically infested with vermin. I would give up a lot to never have to worry again about stepping on a waterbug on my way to the bathroom. And don’t try to tell me about the cicadas or grasshoppers or whatnot you have in the suburbs--they are not the same thing.

Basically what it comes down to is there are many pros to moving, and one big con: we wouldn’t live here anymore. We feel superior to you non-Brooklyn people. Now you know.

Opinions. Yours. Let me have them.

EDITED TO ADD: Before I get more defensive comments: do I really have to say that I'm being facetious when I say I feel superior? Do I have to say that? I guess I have to say that. Sigh.

And I've seen pooping!

Here’s a strange fact about New Yorkers you may not know, if’n you don’t live here: people here think it's acceptable to clip their nails on the subway. I wish I knew why. I wish I could give a passable excuse for the people from all walks of life I see clipping away, letting their nail bits fly with abandon all over the train, skittering across the train’s floor, probably landing in someone else’s sandals, that person screaming WHY GOD WHY while God can only shake his head and weep in horror.

It’s not like nail clipping is the worst thing I’ve seen on the subway; I’ve witnessed exhibitionism and self-mutilation and private acts of love and some intensely distasteful grooming routines, but those were all performed by people with serious mental problems. No excuses are needed for those people. Abandoned by the system, they have been given implicit leave by the City of New York to go ahead and frottage* themselves against a subway pole. Go ahead! We just won’t ever touch that pole again!

But the nail clipping, people. Nail clipping. I’ve seen makeup applied, creams slathered on, nail polish removed—I watched a woman curl her eyelashes on a bus—and while I would never condone such behavior, I at least sort of get why (okay, except the creams, especially the smelly creams). But nail clipping? Can’t it wait? Do you want to impress your fellow passengers with your grooming habits? Does the idea of standing over a trash can or a sink while clipping fill you with despair? Are you hoping to meet someone who loves the feel of freshly clipped nails raked across his/her back? Do you not get that the clip-clip-clip sound rings throughout the entire car, that it’s like a siren announcing that you get off on littering MTA property with your dead skin?

I’ve had enough. Next time I see someone clipping their nails, I’m going to ... well. I'm going to give them such a look.

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*Apparently this isn’t a verb. Until I made it one, just now.