Amsterdamsal in Distress
I'm just getting home from a really shitty day at work, so I'm not quiiiite sure how this is going to come off... we'll see, I guess.
I haven't been online for a few days, so thank you to all the people who sent an email wondering why. Here's why: I went to Amsterdam. It turns out that it takes a few days to get home from Amsterdam.
My friend Jackie from Canada was in Europe on business and we arranged to meet up. The first possible meeting point had been Santiago, Spain, but convoluted and expensive plane tickets turned out to be a significant blocker, so last Saturday I found myself on the morning train to Amsterdam. Or, I should say "trains". 4 of them. 4 hours of them. Anyway, I arrived unscathed, went to the WC in the Central Station as is my arriving-in-Amsterdam ritual to pay my 50cents to use the craaaazy bathroom (1 entrance, men walk to the left, women to the right) and interact with the craaaazy bathroom attendant. Ok, he's probably not crazy, crazy, but it seems at least a little nutty to be a 50year old male bathroom attendant whose value added service is to stroll around the loo telling the women how beautiful they are. I'm just saying.
Once out of central station I managed to find my friend who was waiting for me in Dam Square with her Canadian cousin and 2 Canadian colleagues from Ottawa. Introductions made, Jackie offered me the option to join she and her cousin on a bike tour or join her 2 colleagues on a canal tour. Jackie also explained that it was Pam's first trip out of Canada. After dismissing a small fantasy wherein I suddenly glanced over their shoulders, and exclaimed "hey, look! isn't that Celine Dion"! and then ran, with a Flintstones running-on-air sound effect, in the other direction, I opted for the latter option and set off with Pam & Abbey (affectionately "Paminabby") on a canal tour. A touristy weekend it was gonna be -- I was determined to revel in it.
The tour turned out to be great... with the exception that our particular canal tour coincided with a big rowing race. Suddenly our glass-topped tour boat found itself in 3rd place in the race, completely blocking the 4-place rowing team from going anywhere. It was pretty embarrasing... I really could have done without the canal lined spectators pointing at us and yelling. That aside, I enjoyed the tour more than I expected I might.
As for Jackie, I suspect that she and Nancy had jumped at a chance to be on their own for a while. So rather than meeting us afterward at Madam Toussaud's as planned, we got a message that their 1-hour bike tour was, in fact, 3 hours and that we should do the museum without them. Unh hunh. Anyway, MT's was a-ma-zing... I will post pics here once I download them from my camera... I have some good shots posing with wax-Bono and wax-Bush... uh, I mean wax-GeorgeW.
When we regrouped, we went for a couple of beers and then to a terrific funky little restaurant. We had a few glasses of wine and the conversation got really silly and became about Pam stealing an antique bread plate from the restaurant they had eaten at the night earlier. She explained that she had had too much to drink and, in a moment of poor judgment, shoved the bread plate down her pants and hobbled out with it.
Honestly, and not to sound all self-righteous, but I hate stuff like that. I think people who steal anything have poor moral character. Anyway, stealing. Bad.
So we left the restaurant on a quest to find the Amsterdam Hard Rock Cafe so that Pam could buy proof of having visited the Amsterdam Hard Rock Cafe (I did say she was from Ottawa). It was a fairly long walk and we turned a corner onto a quet canal road where a man jumped at us and started angrily demanding 'paper money'. He, for whatever reason, had singled Nancy out of our crowd and focused most of his attention on her... not sure why, but I suspect things would have turned out much differently (better for him, worse for us) had he targetted, say, Pam. Anyway, he got in Nancy's face and started demanding paper money and told us we better not run because he wouldn't catch us all but he'd catch one of us and that one would be in big trouble. He said if we ran that he would catch one of us and rape them. He looked at each of us wildly and unzipped his jacket, indicating that he had a weapon. He made the sign for 'gun' with his fingers.
So I jumped in between he and Nancy and with my calmest 'fuck with me, I'll fuck with you' attitude voice, I said 'listen asshole. You're not raping anyone. But you are getting fucked', and then I kicked him in the testicles so hard he was still wrything on the ground when we looked back at him from across the canal.
Or at least, that's what happened in my post-incident fantasy version.
What actually did happen was like a slowmotion segment of Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom... the survival instinct kicked in and we each took off running in different directions. We were each like 'Fuck you girlfriends, thanks for the canal tour'. I'm pretty sure, as I made the decision to run, that somewhere in my brain stem I registered that Jackie needed a knee operation and that Pam didn't look like much of a runner and I've been running a bit lately and might have a reasonable chance... but it wasn't even like thinking. It was more of a feeling. And it felt like I was going to be harmed. I wasn't sticking around to see what 'harmed' feels like.
None of us did.
As I said, luckily he zoned in on Nancy. Nancy, despite being timid looking, is a fierce warrior Goddess who has travelled extensively, is a lawyer, and is not completely unfamiliar with agressive, dangerous people. She moved away from him steadily, but not abruptly until she was at the top of the street in a busier area and then ran. The best thing about being accosted by Junkies is that they give up interest easily. Nancy, I guess, was too much trouble and by the time he caught up with her, the rest of us were too far away.
I would like to have been able to report that I heroically stuck up for us, but I didn't. Maybe it was because I had just met these women. Maybe it's because I'm hard wired to respond to certain environmental stimuli in certain evolutionarily adaptive ways. Maybe it's because I'm a coward. Maybe it was the right thing to do in that situation and if we'd done something different, it would have had a worse outcome. Don't know. But my unscientific self leaves a lot of room for the probability that it was Pam's fault. Or rather, it was caused by something Pam attracted to herself and the rest of us were just along for the ride.
See, I wonder, by shoving the antique bread plate down her pants, if Pam karmically activated the series of events that would lead her to being mugged. Perhaps this happened so that she would see in this thief a karmic mirror of herself and learn a lesson she needs to learn about stealing.
If so, I hope she learns this lesson.
And I hope that she got a big-ass splinter.
I'm just getting home from a really shitty day at work, so I'm not quiiiite sure how this is going to come off... we'll see, I guess.
I haven't been online for a few days, so thank you to all the people who sent an email wondering why. Here's why: I went to Amsterdam. It turns out that it takes a few days to get home from Amsterdam.
My friend Jackie from Canada was in Europe on business and we arranged to meet up. The first possible meeting point had been Santiago, Spain, but convoluted and expensive plane tickets turned out to be a significant blocker, so last Saturday I found myself on the morning train to Amsterdam. Or, I should say "trains". 4 of them. 4 hours of them. Anyway, I arrived unscathed, went to the WC in the Central Station as is my arriving-in-Amsterdam ritual to pay my 50cents to use the craaaazy bathroom (1 entrance, men walk to the left, women to the right) and interact with the craaaazy bathroom attendant. Ok, he's probably not crazy, crazy, but it seems at least a little nutty to be a 50year old male bathroom attendant whose value added service is to stroll around the loo telling the women how beautiful they are. I'm just saying.
Once out of central station I managed to find my friend who was waiting for me in Dam Square with her Canadian cousin and 2 Canadian colleagues from Ottawa. Introductions made, Jackie offered me the option to join she and her cousin on a bike tour or join her 2 colleagues on a canal tour. Jackie also explained that it was Pam's first trip out of Canada. After dismissing a small fantasy wherein I suddenly glanced over their shoulders, and exclaimed "hey, look! isn't that Celine Dion"! and then ran, with a Flintstones running-on-air sound effect, in the other direction, I opted for the latter option and set off with Pam & Abbey (affectionately "Paminabby") on a canal tour. A touristy weekend it was gonna be -- I was determined to revel in it.
The tour turned out to be great... with the exception that our particular canal tour coincided with a big rowing race. Suddenly our glass-topped tour boat found itself in 3rd place in the race, completely blocking the 4-place rowing team from going anywhere. It was pretty embarrasing... I really could have done without the canal lined spectators pointing at us and yelling. That aside, I enjoyed the tour more than I expected I might.
As for Jackie, I suspect that she and Nancy had jumped at a chance to be on their own for a while. So rather than meeting us afterward at Madam Toussaud's as planned, we got a message that their 1-hour bike tour was, in fact, 3 hours and that we should do the museum without them. Unh hunh. Anyway, MT's was a-ma-zing... I will post pics here once I download them from my camera... I have some good shots posing with wax-Bono and wax-Bush... uh, I mean wax-GeorgeW.
When we regrouped, we went for a couple of beers and then to a terrific funky little restaurant. We had a few glasses of wine and the conversation got really silly and became about Pam stealing an antique bread plate from the restaurant they had eaten at the night earlier. She explained that she had had too much to drink and, in a moment of poor judgment, shoved the bread plate down her pants and hobbled out with it.
Honestly, and not to sound all self-righteous, but I hate stuff like that. I think people who steal anything have poor moral character. Anyway, stealing. Bad.
So we left the restaurant on a quest to find the Amsterdam Hard Rock Cafe so that Pam could buy proof of having visited the Amsterdam Hard Rock Cafe (I did say she was from Ottawa). It was a fairly long walk and we turned a corner onto a quet canal road where a man jumped at us and started angrily demanding 'paper money'. He, for whatever reason, had singled Nancy out of our crowd and focused most of his attention on her... not sure why, but I suspect things would have turned out much differently (better for him, worse for us) had he targetted, say, Pam. Anyway, he got in Nancy's face and started demanding paper money and told us we better not run because he wouldn't catch us all but he'd catch one of us and that one would be in big trouble. He said if we ran that he would catch one of us and rape them. He looked at each of us wildly and unzipped his jacket, indicating that he had a weapon. He made the sign for 'gun' with his fingers.
So I jumped in between he and Nancy and with my calmest 'fuck with me, I'll fuck with you' attitude voice, I said 'listen asshole. You're not raping anyone. But you are getting fucked', and then I kicked him in the testicles so hard he was still wrything on the ground when we looked back at him from across the canal.
Or at least, that's what happened in my post-incident fantasy version.
What actually did happen was like a slowmotion segment of Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom... the survival instinct kicked in and we each took off running in different directions. We were each like 'Fuck you girlfriends, thanks for the canal tour'. I'm pretty sure, as I made the decision to run, that somewhere in my brain stem I registered that Jackie needed a knee operation and that Pam didn't look like much of a runner and I've been running a bit lately and might have a reasonable chance... but it wasn't even like thinking. It was more of a feeling. And it felt like I was going to be harmed. I wasn't sticking around to see what 'harmed' feels like.
None of us did.
As I said, luckily he zoned in on Nancy. Nancy, despite being timid looking, is a fierce warrior Goddess who has travelled extensively, is a lawyer, and is not completely unfamiliar with agressive, dangerous people. She moved away from him steadily, but not abruptly until she was at the top of the street in a busier area and then ran. The best thing about being accosted by Junkies is that they give up interest easily. Nancy, I guess, was too much trouble and by the time he caught up with her, the rest of us were too far away.
I would like to have been able to report that I heroically stuck up for us, but I didn't. Maybe it was because I had just met these women. Maybe it's because I'm hard wired to respond to certain environmental stimuli in certain evolutionarily adaptive ways. Maybe it's because I'm a coward. Maybe it was the right thing to do in that situation and if we'd done something different, it would have had a worse outcome. Don't know. But my unscientific self leaves a lot of room for the probability that it was Pam's fault. Or rather, it was caused by something Pam attracted to herself and the rest of us were just along for the ride.
See, I wonder, by shoving the antique bread plate down her pants, if Pam karmically activated the series of events that would lead her to being mugged. Perhaps this happened so that she would see in this thief a karmic mirror of herself and learn a lesson she needs to learn about stealing.
If so, I hope she learns this lesson.
And I hope that she got a big-ass splinter.
posted by Penless Artist at 8:17 p.m.
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