What A Mug

Twice a week I am an honored guest of the LA Department of Transportation.
At the corner of Balboa and Nordhoff (that's Northridge for the
Valley-Impaired), I board a bus that takes me to less than a mile from my
Shul in Westchester (that's near LAX for pretty much everybody). Although
it induces in me the illusion that I'm living an NYCesque urban life and not
a classic upper middle class LA Jewish life, it has its share of
adjustments.

Like what to carry. I've always use my car as my office. In my trunk is a
plastic bin in which are ensconced the sacred annals of my Neighborhood
Council. Another bin contains my Talmud tractate I'm presently studying,
and various sundry sheet music. In the cab is an amalgam of children's
books, junk food wrappers, and old copies of the LA Times. This car is
hardware for use in the traffic warfare that most characterizes our fair
city. But when you are a mass transit user, you must make choices, and they
must fit in your briefcase, man-purse, or travel mug.

That's three things for two hands. I have yet to board the bus without
forgetting something in my car. Or, as was the case yesterday, on it.
Thank God it was the most dispensible thing; i.e., the mug. But Lord, I was
reeealllly looking forward to sipping that joe while going over my sermons.
I left it on the top of my car. It sat there near the side of my car like a
big yellow siren in a Starsky and Hutch nightmare.

My second pang of regret -- after suffering the loss of joe -- was what to
tell my wife. She got it for me to congratulate me on my new job. Dude,
where did she buy it? Probably at the camping section of Target. Yeah,
that's it. I'll just get a new one and say nothing, right? Sweat begins to
roll across my temple in the air-conditioned bus.

And then I did what I always do when I forget something. I forgot about it
for a while. Then, coming back from the bus at the end of the day, I
calculated how much time it would take to go into the Target and find a new
mug. The place would probably be swamped with back to school zombies
walking way too slow. What's worse, the bus was caught in some nasty
traffic. The LADOT schedule said the trip was supposed to take 40 minutes.
Hah. getting to the city in the morning was close to that, but in the
afternoon it never took less than an hour. While normally I don't care,
since it gives me more time to plan a lesson or read the paper, today I had
to get that mug and get home before my wife did. I get off the bus 1 hour
and 45 minutes after boarding it. I step from air conditioned nervousness
to triple digit heat to which according to my religion I must submit. I'm
dreaming, I thought.

Then, there it was. The mug I left there was sitting on my car with the
same Starsky and Hutch precariousness 11 hours after I had left it there.
Hundreds of people saw it while waiting for the bus. Thousands of cars
passed by it slowly. Kids rode their bike past it. Not one person took it.
Not one.

So this is LA. Once you get out of the car and look around, you find there
are people besides the ones you fight with in traffic. There was once a
time when Jews would sing hashkiveinu at the shul at night in order to
conjure God's protection over them as they walked home on a dark and
dangerous path. Maybe that protection still lasts, through the
multi-cultural goop that comprises the people of Los Angeles. It's good to
be a City Jew.