It's A Small World After All

I feel blessed to live in an age in which I can fly to South Africa in less time than it takes for the M105 bus to travel from the 86th Street to 14th Street. I am grateful to have stands on every corner with bananas from Honduras, canteloupes from Chile and calendars from 2007. I am delighted that my pants are Sri Lankan, my jacket Laotian and my shirt Turkemenistian. In fact, right now, I'm nodding my head from side to side, singing, "It's a world of laughter, a world of tears..."
But, at the risk of sound like a whiner or a communist, I must tell you, it's not all good. Our subway cars, made in Japan, have seats suitable only for tiny Japanese tushies. Most of us with good, solid American tushies spill over the ridge between the seats. Consequently, only two of three seats are occupied by commuters. The in-between seat holds either a small CVS shopping bag or a Yorkie. Because our clothes are made in China, where a large woman weighs 79 pounds, I, even after six months of weight watchers, am busting out of extra large. I don't know what comes after that. Gunny sack?
But those are de minimis complaints. The one I'm about to tell you is so de maximus that it has driven four of my acquaintances to renew their relationship with black russians. If you've ever been at your wits' end because the word document you just spent 9 hours working on disappeared or you were billed twice by the same company for a purchase you never made once, and you called the "contact us" number, you've felt my pain. A lilting,polite and utterly incomprehensible voice answered from a country where English was not learned at one's mother's knee. You explained your issue to him and he gave you very intelligent, explicit directions in Hindi. Already crazed when you called, you are now apoplectic. Trying not to sound un- p.c., you ask to speak to someone else who you have a prayer of understanding. It won't happen. They all went to the same school. Four hours later, your document still lost, your bill still unresolved and phone battery down to one bar, your helper says,"And have we resolved your problem to your satisfaction?" You answer, "yes, thank you," as you're thinking,"Are you fucking out of your mind. You need to die."
Did I mention there were pros and cons of a small world?