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Wheels Up

One of my favorite essays is "Wheels Up," by Sloane Crosley.

Here, Sloane waits for a cab. Five feet away, a woman in a wheelchair is also waiting. Sloane arrived at the corner first; this is something no one is acknowledging. (New York is--at all times--a powder keg of tension.)

A cab arrives; it's especially large, to accommodate people in wheelchairs. Sloane--pleased with her own magnanimous nature--cedes her right to the cab.

The wheelchair-bound person kisses her fully-mobile husband; the husband leaps in the cab, while the woman stays on the sidewalk; the cab speeds off.

Stunning.

Sloane next watches the person in the wheelchair blithely running over a dog's tail; when the dog-owner spots the wheelchair, he murmurs, "Oh, she didn't see." Outraged, Sloane corrects the record: "She DID SEE. She just didn't care."

And the essay ends the only way it can end: "Lady, what's wrong with you?" says a nearby bodega clerk. "That woman was in a wheelchair."

Subversive, surprising, fast-paced--and basically everyone in this essay is at least just slightly insane. The story seems to capture life as I know it. Life in New York, at least. By reflecting on absurd miscommunication and injustice, Ms. Crosley is offering us just a small dose of therapy. Who could resist?
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