Tuesday, September 2, 2008

If they wanna look, we can give em an...encore

P.S. (meaning pre-script) The title shout out is the aforementioned Brit Brit ringtone. In this song, she also rhymes "freakshow" with "peep show." Definitely the most brilliant lyricist of our time.

Yesterday being the last REAL day of summer (if you can't wear white, it's summer no more), a few of us decided to trek out to Astoria to relax by the glorious Astoria Park Pool. Had I known about the Astoria Park Pool before yesterday, this probably would not have been the first time I made this journey.

Whilst (yes, whilst) lounging in my oh-so-retro Esther Williams bathing suit (thanks Daddy Likey!!) a friendly female police officer wandered over to our group. Always the one to sit up and give my full attention to authority figures (I attribute this as the reason I never got in trouble in high school, despite various indiscretions), I thought that I should take note. What I was slightly unprepared for was not her message, per se, but the frank way in which she delivered it: "Listen ladies, just so you know, there are a bunch of perverts around here. They are gonna go over to that ledge and take your picture. When you see this happen, do not approach them, but know that this behavior is not ok. Let me know, I will take care of it." Lovely. It's not that this only happens in New York, but it is the probably the only place where police officers introduce it as a complete certainty.

The best part of this was, not 20 minutes later, my friends and I noticed one of these "perverts" (cleverly disguised as a well dressed woman with a $300 camera and a press pass) aiming her camera right at us as we blissfully swam away our last moments of summer. Seconds after we spotted her, the police officers leaped to their duty, seemingly ready to destroy her expensive camera if she didn't leave immediately. But (and here is the "only in New York" part) the most interesting thing that moment was not the eminent arrest of the woman taking pictures of park dwellers utilizing their final summer day, but the two young men, not 10 feet away from this display, staging an epic star wars light saber battle. Almost exactly like this:



After this, perverts were a complete afterthought. George Michael Bluth would have been so proud.

1 comment:

DrAnn said...

I live a fairly dull life simply saving gang bangers and victims of self inflicted gun shot wounds- and your words of wisdom delight me on a daily basis. Just when I think the people of ghetto-fab Columbia are off the hook- I turn to Lauren stories and relish in the fact that "them Yankees" are that much odder than good ole southerns.

Keep up that awesome life stories.