Serendipity & a dead cell phone

The trouble with newfangled, fancy cellular devices is that rarely is anything about them universal. Including, rather unfortunately, the cords we use to charge them. My friend Phil recently got one of these new "phones" complete with it's own charger... that Phil conveniently left in Chicago when he came to visit a few friends in Washington, DC. His phone could handle about two days without being charged. He was here for four days. This story begins on his third day here, in the frigid January air at roughly two in the morning somewhere, somewhere in the U Street corridor.

I spent my evening at a party billed as the Obama-rama Pajama Party in honor of our newly elected President Obama (he was a total no-show, but we figure he's a bit busy what with saving the world & all). Slippers and Obey t-shirt adorned, I was enjoying the ridiculousness that comes from seeing all your closest friends in bathrobes, boxers, and eye masks, imbibing the finest the kegs had to offer, which, quite honestly, was not all that fine, tho perfectly good for such an occasion. At some point in the evening I texted the address to Phil in hopes that he would join in the fun, not really realizing that every text just might be his last.

When the rest of the party was well into their fourth, fifth, or sixth beers, and I had long since switched to water in anticipation of driving a friend's car back to my house, I received the last phone call made on Phil's phone during his DC trip. He was lost somewhere on U Street, cabs were non-existent, and it was horribly, face-numbingly cold out. Just as I was describing which store I would meet him in front of on U Street, his cell phone gave up the ghost. We were officially incommunicado, and my only hope of finding him was to troll up and down the street in a borrowed SUV searching the sidewalk for his black puffy coat, the only identifying characteristic that might stand out against DC's constant stream of black and grey trench and pea coats.

I started my U Street reconnaissance mission around 11th Street, driving slowly towards 16th, and Phil's last known whereabouts. A group of young and obviously intoxicated brave souls who had more than likely shut down the bar were waving frantically for the only taxi in sight as I passed 16th Street. None of them had on a black puffy coat. I decided to pull over to make one final last ditch effort to call Phil's powerless phone. After a text message and a straight to voicemail call, I flicked my turn signal to pull back into the ever thinning traffic, only to see out of the corner of my eye a black puffy coat worn by the person walking past my passenger side door. It was Phil!

I honked the horn because there was no way I was getting out of the car in slippers and thin pajama pants, and Phil turned, ready to be mad at whoever was causing the unwelcome din. I waved frantically and rolled down the window, ripping my hat from my head in hopes that he would more easily recognize me. His annoyance turned to disbelief as he opened the door, peering inside to make sure it really was me. He stood there with the passenger door wide open, momentarily awed that I had actually found him, until I insisted he get in and shut the door because of the insanely cold draft the open door was letting into the car. As it turns out he had been considering the merits of finding an unoccupied park bench to sleep on because he had lost the slip of paper with where he was staying scrawled on it, just in case being completely lost and not remembering the address of my friend's party wasn't enough.

In the end, I drove us back to the now dying down Obama-rama Pajama party, made sure Phil had a beer, and enjoyed the rest of my evening, feeling mildly like a superhero. At least I saved one person from a chilly night fraught with the perils of a DC park bench, no thanks to cell phones!

Nine feet of hat

Walking in the front door to my parents' house is always a glorious visual assault on the eyes. Usually, the onslaught consists of all the oil paintings and mission style furniture I'm used to, a few new objets d'arts, and the latest of a constantly changing stream of exercise equipment (more on this later). The front room in our basic four square on the near north side of Indianapolis is brimming with oriental rugs, dark wood cabinets, and gilded frames on contemporary and century old paintings alike. It's a veritable kaleidoscope of patterns and colors.

This year, however, upon jostling open the old wooden door with its beveled glass panes, I managed to trip over a beach-ball-sized white sphere, a little too plain to not be suspicious in such a melee. I picked it up in order to inspect it, and maybe even discover it's purpose in my living room, lying on the floor between the elliptical machine and the African spiked sword hanging next to the front door. I found that it was trailing a stretch of red material coming out of a black plastic trash bag. I continued pulling the ball up until my hands were over my head, and I figured, at about five foot seven inches of me, plus my arms in the air, this thing had to be about six and a half feet of fuzzy white ball and red felt, but the red cloth was still filling the bag. I abandoned the ball & started pulling on the cloth until I came to a fuzzy white band about a foot and a half in width. I was holding the largest Santa hat I had ever encountered. Most likely the largest Santa hat anyone had ever encountered.

So I did what any sensible person with a nine or so foot Santa hat slung over her shoulder would do. I threw it over myself & started doing a cross between the robot & the sprinkler. The potential for tripping over the extraneous material at my feet was monumental, so I stuck to mainly flailing my arms around until I could no longer take the heat (that many yards of felt get stifling) and began searching for a way out.

The next day family & friends would be coming to our house for a traditional Thanksgiving dinner of spaghetti & meatballs. It's traditional in my family anyway, turkey & gravy be damned! Mom wanted to move the elliptical machine to the garage so that guests would not have to navigate around it's hulking presence. I had a better idea. The giant Santa hat fit nicely over this most recent instrument of torture masquerading as exercise & completely blocked the view of our front table brimming with Christmas cards, yet-to-be-paid bills, Dwell and Vanity Fair magazines, and solicitations for donations from my high school and college. The tepee sized mass of red felt also created a more festive mood considering that the living room lacked a Christmas tree.

My dad later informed me that the Santa hat's intended recipient was the seven foot tall brick sculpture of a serene head, with eyes closed and a slight Mona Lisa-like smile, that we had helped install two years ago with the artist James Tyler. He had sculpted the head out of clay, then cut the clay into bricks and fired batches at different temperatures. This made some of the bricks appear glazed almost blue while others were standard reddish brick color. The sculpture is equipt with speakers and motion sensors so that when pedestrians stroll past, the sculpture starts making any one of a dozen random noises, from honking cabs to saxophone serenades. It's a surprising din for a head with such a calm expression.

Dad's plan was to install the hat on the head and gather our family on one side of it for a "calm amidst the consumer storm" family Christmas card. The day after Thanksgiving my mom and I ushered the family dog, Star, into my brother's miniature, red gas-sipper and drove downtown to the sculpture site to meet my dad & brother in order to orchestrate this Christmas scene. Mom & I were taking bets on how long the hat would remain on the head since dad's plan was to leave it as Christmas decoration once our photos had been taken. My theory was that such soft, extensive amounts of felt would beg to be stolen and used as a sleeping bag for one (or more) homeless person(s). Fortunately, when I returned to Indy for Christmas, this had not come to pass, and the hat, soggy and slightly off kilter, was still in place upon the statue.