A look on the lighter side: Profiles in cluelessness

Judy Epstein

It’s not fair to say that I’m “clueless.” I just don’t always react to things the same way as everyone else. 

For example, there’s the trip I took spring break of freshman year with three classmates. We didn’t have much money but if we scrimped on things like hotel rooms we had just enough for three nights in the Big Apple. We reached an impasse with the hotel clerk. 

“Just one room,” Tom insisted. He and his roommate Frank had done the planning, then roped in my friend Sue and me to help with expenses.    

“For all four of you?” asked the clerk, eyebrows so high they disappeared under his bangs. “This isn’t that kind of hotel.”

What kind is it? I wondered, looking around. The gilt edges had long ago worn off everything here. But located as it was, at the heart of seedy 1970s Times Square, this mildew palace was all we could afford – for one room.

“He thinks we’re planning an orgy,” Sue whispered.    

“Here? Who would even take their clothes off, here?” I whispered back. I was planning to sleep in mine.

But the clerk insisted: two rooms. “One for the boys, one for the girls, right?” he said, winking as he dangled two keys in our faces. Since that was exactly our plan, his attitude baffled me. 

Upstairs, Sue and I were choosing night stands when a scream rang out from the guys room down the hall. We rushed in. There, on the wall, antennae waving wildly, was a gigantic brown bug. 

I froze in my tracks. I had never seen a cockroach before, let alone one the size of a butterfly. Could it jump like a grasshopper? I edged back. “Can you reach the phone?” I asked Frank. “Ask the desk for someone to kill that!” 

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” said Sue. In one fluid motion she slipped off her pump, grasping its toe and slamming its heel onto the bug. One more dented stain on the wall. 

“We’ll stay with you guys,” said Frank. 

“Oh, no you won’t, not if we’re paying for two rooms,” I replied.  

“Then we’re switching rooms.”

“All right,” said Sue. That meant I switched too, against my will. At least I insisted that Sue took the side of the room with the stain.

Then we went out to find Culture. Too broke for cabs, we tumbled down into a subway stop around midnight.  But looking around, it dawned on us that perhaps our luck had run out. There wasn’t another soul in sight.  Not a cop, not a token clerk. Not even a homeless man.   

Before I could think, the words were out of me, “Where’s all the muggers?”

“Shut up!” My friends almost threw me onto the tracks in their haste to silence me. “You want to jinx us? Or just get us killed?” 

But thanks to the same God who looks after drunks and Englishmen, nothing worse than that insect happened to us, the entire trip.

Years later, I was on another subway platform. I was now living and working in Manhattan. It was still a gritty town, but so far I hadn’t been mugged – and I intended to keep it that way.

So after the train rolled into the station and stopped, I hopped on quickly. Then I looked around and got a funny feeling. Something was up with this train. There was a man at every doorway of every car, leaning out to check the platform, then back in. Who were they? What were they up to? You know how people say “Trust your gut”? Well, my gut was screaming, “Get out of here!” So before the doors had completely closed, I leaped out.

As I stood on the platform, catching my breath, I heard a voice.

“Darn, I just missed it,” said a woman behind me.

“What did you miss?”

“That train.  Didn’t you see them? Those were the Guardian Angels. They’ve said they’re going to ride random trains at night, keeping them safe since the police don’t seem able to. Didn’t you see their red berets?”

Now that she mentioned it, I had. What do you know? Thanks to my cracker-jack instincts, I had just jumped off what was probably the safest train in all New York, that night.

But it would be harsh to say I was clueless.  

 See Judy’s  stand-up performance at Governor’s Comedy Club in Levittown on Sunday, Oct. 13, at 3 p.m. See www.govs.com for details.

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