SelfAbsorbed.ME : ‘It’s Your Life, We Just Write it Funnier’

This past weekend I voyaged to Vermont. Everyone said I’d morph into an icicle, not realizing that risk of death by frostbite wasn’t the point. I just wanted to get Out. Of. Manhattan.

Let me reiterate:

OUT!

Sure we love the chaos, the clubs, dodging people’s spit and watching drunk men use our discarded water bottle as urinals in the subway, but sometimes it’s too much. Sometimes your body starts to revolt and you find yourself dressing like Ugly Betty or harboring fantasies about doing things like quitting alcohol. When ideas this ludicrous come to mind, you know you need a break.

My voyage started painfully early at JFK, but was well worth it. I wavered out of an Ambien-induced coma just as we were landing and in time to see a winter wonderland surrounding a picturesque snow encrusted red barn. I almost shed a tear of joy.

A red barn.

So simple. And it made me so happy.

Given the opportunity, I probably would’ve embraced a barnyard animal. Luckily, no one considers me responsible enough to interact with chickens.

We decided to pick up a snack before our one hour car ride to ski resort wilderness. Strange, the woman at the airport café smiled at me. That’s right. Smiled. She was also doing something very strange…she was speaking slowly and cheerfully, and performing her tasks with care. At first I thought she was handicapped, then I remembered, ‘we’re not in New York anymore.’ There’s no raging line of eighteen angry investment bankers behind us, so clearly this woman (and we) were able to take our time.

Crazy. I know.

I ordered a bagel with cream cheese, banana and orange juice, suddenly cautious of my rapid, bossy speech.

“That’s $3.19,” she said, glowing with friendliness.

“You mean $13.19,” I corrected, pulling out a twenty.

She shook her head.

A bagel in New York is an easy five dollars and juice another four. Put it in an airport and that gives them the opportunity to bankrupt you. At this point, I was almost ready to screw skiing and spend the weekend in the local supermarket stocking up on non-overpriced Manhattan food to ship back to Tribeca. But we moved on.

We get in a cab where our taxi driver was a) nice b) spoke English and c) wasn’t on a cell phone. An 8th generation Vermonter, he lectured us about the surrounding mountains and the area further North which he referred to as “God’s Country.”

Wow. All we have is uptown and downtown.

At the resort, the amount of people that smiled, took their time, and engaged us in friendly chatter made me feel like I’d landed on Mars. The fact that I was wearing a snowsuit, goggles and a facemask while stomping around in ski boots added to this acute recognition that I was an astronaut flailing around on alien terrain. Sometimes, my friend and I would just stare each other jaws agape like, “Are you kidding?” Like when the person who checked our IDs at the Burlington airport security at 5 am cheerfully inquired, “Good morning! How was your drive to the airport this morning? Is it snowy out there yet?” with a 100% sincere grin.

If I’d been New York, I would’ve assumed everyone we’d encountered was making fun of us and probably sworn at them.

Clearly, it takes some time in the wilderness to fully understand just how high strung and wired we are. Is it the city? Is it us? If you put a bunch of New Yorkers at a restaurant in the Green Mountain wilderness would they still be dicks to the waiters and competing with one another to order the most expensive bottle of wine? Or would the abundance of fur trees allow them to relax? I know we’re city people, but after this trip I’m not fully convinced we’re human.