Of all pet animals, hamsters die the worst possible deaths. I actually heard someone claim this recently. While I do not necessarily agree with the assertion, I am almost positive that most pet-owners have a hamster mortality story of their own. Here is mine:
Like most hamsters, Taco enjoyed rolling around in a plastic ball. True, it was his only leisure activity, but I think, given that he was a hamster, he was more than satisfied. The way he would rocket around our house with that contented look on his face suggested that in another life he may have been a racecar driver. In this life, though, he had a more modest occupation: king of the kitchen floor.
One night my parents had some friends over and I decided that if the rest of the family was having fun, Taco should be too. I put him in his ball and set him free in the kitchen. With acceleration that would make most remote control cars envious, he sped off out of sight.
Needless to say, watching a hamster in a plastic ball isn't all that exciting, so I went back to doing kid stuff. A few hours later, after my parents' guests had departed (they had been drinking wine in the living room), I realized that Taco was missing. I searched throughout the house but could find no clues as to his whereabouts. Confused and growing concerned, I informed my parents of the situation. Though neither had paid the rolling plastic ball much attention, both recalled seeing him at some stage earlier in the evening.
"Relax, Andrew. I'm sure he is around here somewhere."
I wasn't so sure. It wasn't like Taco to be elusive. After all, there are very few places to hide effectively when you are encased in a 10-inch diameter ball of plastic.
Now it is important for me to tell you that half of our living room is about 5 inches lower than the other half. If Taco were to roll into this part of the room, gravity and his size would render him stuck and confined to that area. Since my parents had been occupying this room with their guests, I hadn't checked it yet.
So, flanked by both my parents, I walked hurriedly to the living room, certain that I would find him stuck in a corner of the room or something. Perhaps his little legs had grown tired, and he had retired for a nap. Or maybe he finally realized the futility of bouncing into furniture in a plastic ball, and was patiently awaiting return to his plush plastic housing unit.
If only that were true. As we scoured the living room, looking under couches and chairs, I noticed with alarm that the sliding glass door to my backyard was wide open.
Oh no, I thought, outside. The one place hamsters should never be. Due to their bite-size statute and lack of any and all survival instincts, a hamster in the wild is, before long, an eaten hamster. That meant I had no time to spare. Birds of prey, our cats, and other predators would only give me so much time before Taco became dinner. Growing more anxious by the minute, I wondered how long it had been since he escaped the house and, more importantly, how far he could have traveled in that time.
Not that far, it turns out. Taco had rolled directly out of the house and into the pool.
I still wonder to this day how long it took the ball to fill up with water and what his little hamster brain was thinking, if anything, as he slowly sank to the bottom of the deep-end of the pool. Maybe, having finally escaped the plastic tubes, wood shavings, endless ball-rolling and general monotony which constituted the entirety of his existence as our beloved pet, he finally felt liberated in his own hamster way.
Because he is such a charitable person, Peter offered me a 30-day guest pass for October to New York Sports Club, one of the many franchise gyms that populate the city. While the pass entitled me to full access to the club, the purpose of Peter's donation was singular: I could now join him in a weekly boxing class which he had been attending since the middle of summer and praising pretty much since his first exposure.
Now this is not the type of boxing class you might be imagining. There is no boxing ring. We don't spar with each other. Most importantly, we aren't forced to submit ourselves to abject humiliation by boxing against an instructor -- in this case a bald-headed behemoth of a man, who is at once an initimidating ogre and kind-hearted teacher. A curious blend, to be sure. He could, I'm fairly certain, single-punchedly decapitate any one of his students, even those who have obvious boxing expertise. But, emotionally, I don't think he could bring himself to do it. His paternal instincts bar such violent behavior.
But I digress. This isn't one of those Tae Bo classes that were all the rage in the late 1990s, either. We wear gloves. We hit heavy bags. We are taught to jab, to uppercut, to duck and move, to use the right foot for power and stability. When doing "mitts," we coordinate all of these activities, striking at the instructor's hands while he circles and dodges. Jab, jab, strike. Jab, uppercut, pivot, jab. Sometimes he even fights back with gloves instead of mitts, but I haven't had the pleasure of getting pummeled yet.
Before the first class, I was, frankly, a bit apprehensive. Peter explained the format, and claimed that it was very easy to catch on. Despite his reassurances, though, I was convinced that I would either (A) look like a total moron in boxing gloves, despeartely punching a heavy bag which refuses to budge while a diminutive 40 year-old woman standing at my side pummels the very same bag, rocking it back and forth as if it were afloat in the perfect storm; or (B) be so out of shape as to collapse, midway through the hour, and become the object of the thunderous laughter and subsequent pity of my classmates as I am wheeled out of the room, hooked up to an IV.
It turns out my mind wasn't too far off when it concocted the second scenario. Although Peter warned me to take it easy, that first class I valiantly attempted to keep up with the instructor's commands. Jumping jacks, squat thrusts, mountain climbers, high knees, more jumping jacks, push-ups, topped off with even more -- see a pattern here? -- jumping jacks. This continued for what seemed like an eternity. It wasn't long, perhaps 10 minutes into that eternity, before my insides began to burn, my legs to ache, and collapse began to appeal as a life-saving alternative to more jumping jacks. Pity be damned. I was hurting here.
The instructor must have noticed my internal struggle and sensed weakness, because he yelled, at the very moment when I had finally decided to protest any more physical exertion, the following: "Hey, new guy! Suck it up!!"
And, dammit, he was looking directly at me. I was that new guy! The guy incapable of keeping up. Peter was right: I should have taken it easy! But now was no time for regret; I had to "suck it up" and perservere.
So I did. Although I could barely stand, I managed, to my surprise, to perform close but shaky equivalents of all of the exercises, with periodic panting breaks every few minutes, of course.
By my third class, which was last night, I had finally discovered the art of the punch: elbows in, legs shoulder-width apart, left hand at chin to block incoming fists, right foot pivoting on the toe outward to provide power, fist moving straight forward, rotating so that the knuckles become horizontal. Boom. And, yes, the bag moves when I hit it. Quite a bit, in fact.
Previously, I said that, regardless of what Al Qaeda has done or threatened to do, I would not stop riding the subway. That proclamation was in response to the London bombings. But this weekend, after watching a live press conference about a "specific" bomb threat on the Manhattan subways just a half hour before I had to be in TriBeCa for a law firm dinner, I turned myself into a bold-faced liar: I purposely avoided taking the subway. Perhaps irrationally, I opted for a cab instead, thereby wasting $7 and, as a consequence of spending 10 minutes hailing a cab on Broadway during rush hour, arriving at the dinner late.
In my defense, I did ride the A train later on that night to the airport, ignoring the threat with the help of a few glasses of wine for an honored guest who insisted I be at JFK to greet her. Although the two of us traversed most of lower Manhattan and plenty of Midtown and Central Park over the course of the weekend, we didn't take the subway but once (the return trip to the airport). Frankly, I felt a bit ashamed for not utilizing public transportation as I normally would, but cabs seemed the safer alternative given the circumstances (not to claim that riding in a NYC cab is "safe" by any means).
If given a choice, I prefer to think of myself as someone who would not succumb to such a threat, as someone who would not allow my liberty to be compromised by those whose goal it is to destroy that liberty. But like most rational people, I have my fears -- extreme heights, sharks in the swimming pool, and dolls -- and am inclined, in most scenarios, towards self-preservation. Despite the additional security or perhaps because of it, it just felt more sensible to avoid the trains altogether rather than to make a point about my willingness to take risks or to stand up to foreign terrorists. That, and I wanted to make sure my guest would come back for another visit.
Of all pet animals, hamsters die the worst possible deaths. I actually heard someone claim this recently. While I do not necessarily agree with the assertion, I am almost positive that most pet-owners have a hamster mortality story of their own. Here is mine:
