Welcome to Chicago! (Here’s a Cold Potato)
A Horrifying Tale of Indifference
“There’s proper acclaim given to confessional, self-relavatory, sometimes dark writing or performing or stand-up or whatever it is. And there’s a lot of proper acclaim given to how relavatory that is. But there are things that people ignore in observational humor or just jokes that seem small where you go, ‘That’s that whole person right there.’ And I do sometimes think, well, you know, there’s jokes that seem like an innocuous everyday observation that are as dark about human nature as any real ‘tear open your guts and show all the horrible sides of you’ comedy.” — John Mulaney
At the beginning of this month, I moved 12 hours away from my hometown to start a new job in Chicago. I don’t know anyone here, but I decided it was a good work opportunity and a perfect time for a change, so I went for it. It’s been mostly great so far, and I’m starting to adjust to this new environment after living the first 23 years of my life in Georgia. I’m finding that all of my preconcieved notions about the city (which I learned exclusively from television and movies) are all true — the pizza is deep and the wind is strong.
Still, even as I get more and more used to all this, there are moments when it becomes perfectly clear that I’m a long, long way from home.
I was leaving the office after the first week at my new job, and it was hard not to feel a little proud of myself.
Maybe, in some surprising turn of events, it’s going to be an easy adjustment, I thought. Maybe I’m built for living in the city, after all.
This moment of pure optimism hit me as I shot out from the golden revolving door of the Mart and onto the Chicago street. I looked up at the skyline, where architecturally magnificent buildings were glistening with a combination of an irregular array of lit rooms and the reflection of the few persisting beams of sunlight left at dusk. There aren’t many windows in my company’s office, so I love walking out to this riverside view of the city. It consistently makes me feel much more important than I know I actually am.
After my daily admiration for the beautiful scene, I looked down just in time to notice a stranger aggressively take a bite out of a cold potato.
Before you ask, I know it wasn’t actually an apple because I checked. Like any normal person, I figured my eyes were deceiving me and this man was biting into a granny smith or even a red delicious, but no. Upon further inspection, it was a potato. It was enormous, tin foil-wrapped potato.
I immediately wondered how long it would take him to finish it. Was it a snack? Was it dinner? I had so many questions.
The part that was the most difficult to grapple with, however, was how normal it seemed to everyone else on the street. I know for a fact that I wasn’t the only one to see him chowing down, but I was definitely the only one to express any confusion. Everyone else — and there were at least seven or eight other people who saw this happen — acted like it was perfectly normal. They saw nothing wrong.
If they would have said something like “Hey, there goes potato man again,” or “How’s that potato, sir?” or even simply conveyed a similar notion with their facial expressions, it would have been infinitely easier to comprehend. At least there would have been some kind of acknowledgement, but no. No one batted an eye. If I was in Idaho or Ireland I wouldn’t even be bringing this up, believe me. I’d be celebrating his allegiance to a stereotype. But I’m not in either of those international potato hubs, so I feel it’s my responsibility — nay, society’s responsibility — to do something. Instead of sharing that responsibility and acting on it, everyone left me to wonder if I was the weird one in this scenario for not biting straight into cold potatoes as I walk around on the crowded sidewalks.
Look — I know there are much weirder things going on in the city that I might be overlooking, but most of them are weird in an obvious or recognizable way. This was so subtle. It felt so personal. It shakes me to my core in a way nothing ever has.
I made my way back toward the red line station, passing a sea of strangers on my way but still feeling utterly alone. I couldn’t know for certain whether or not each passing face was so hardened by the urban environment — so immune to (and uninterested in) the nuances of everyday life — that a man biting straight into a potato for all the world to see isn’t cause for alarm. Apparently, it’s not even cause for a second glance.
The experience made me realize that maybe it’s only a matter of time before I, too, am biting into a potato as if it were a green apple. Or, even worse, maybe it’s only a matter of time before I quit noticing these kinds of things.
Either way, I also realized I’ve got a long way to go before I can say I’ve fully adjusted to living in the city.
