[386] in Humor
HUMOR: Hostile Philadelphians
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (abennett@MIT.EDU)
Thu Jul 28 12:45:51 1994
From: abennett@MIT.EDU
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Date: Thu, 28 Jul 94 12:33:57 EDT
Date: Wed, 29 Jun 94 12:35:32 PDT
From: Connie_Kleinjans@Novell.COM (Connie Kleinjans)
From marc_kenig@blyth.com
>From some Philly newspaper or other....
What do you mean, we're hostile? by Steve Lopez
You saw the story. You saw it, you heard about it whatever.
Some guy from Duke University, calling himself a doctor, says
Philadelphia is the most hostile city in the United States. Which would
be fine, of course. Except that when you learn more about it. you
realize it was not meant as a compliment.
According to a Gallup Poll commissioned by Dr. Redford Williams, we're
the most hostile and mistrustful people around. We even beat New York
in something called the "hostility index." We also take first place
dropping dead of heart disease, according to Dr. Williams, who believes
there's a connection. OK. While it is not my intention to stand in the
way of pioneering science, I have a problem or two here, and so I
called Duke. A woman calling herself Linda, Dr. Williams' assistant,
said the boss was not in. She told me he was on a book tour.
A book tour?
"Yes," she said.
Tell him he can skip Philadelphia, I said. What's the book title,
anyway?
"Anger Kills," she said.
Well now isn't that nice. The world really needed one more egghead
professor to lean back at his desk, stare at the ceiling, and think up
another reason to rank American cities. But not just any egghead. It
had to be somebody at the forefront of medical research. Somebody sharp
enough to make a connection between stress and health.
Reputation, shmeputation
I asked Linda if Dr. Williams ever got out from behind his desk.
"He has a high reputation," she said.
"It's a small town," I said.
She told me to call New York and, try to track him down.
No, I'll tell you what, I said. You tell him to call me, so I can
straighten him out. Capeesh?
Linda sensed hostility on my part. Dr. Williams' book can actually help
a person like me, she said. Let's say you are in a supermarket line,
and it's 10 items o less, but someone in front of you has more than 10
items. What do you do?
That's easy, I said. You say, "What're you, stupid? You can't count,
pal, or what?"
This would be wrong, she said.
You could just smack them, I said.
"Wouldn't it be better," Linda asked, "to just stand there and count
to 10," until the anger passed?
Higher education in America.
"Here's the problem," I said. "Philadelphia is not a count-to-10 city.
And yo know what? We're proud of it."
Moments later, I found myself speaking to Dr. Williams himself. I And
if we didn' quite click in th course of our conversation, I suppose it
might have gone wrong right at the top, when I said:
"Duke University. I thought it was just a basketball program. I didn't
know they had classes or anything."
Or it could have been when I said:
"Wha'd you come out of a tree or what?"
Dr. Williams was not amused. In fact, he seemed to have no sense of
humor whatsoever. And my feeling, based on my own personal research,
is that this type of pent-up behavior can lead to serious health
problems. Not to shoot holes in Dr. Williams' hypothesis, I did ask if,
in the course of his research, he gave any thought to lifelong
consumption of cheesesteaks and hoagies as factors in our dropping dead.
Myself, I would have given cheesesteaks to one group of laboratory I
rats, and made the second group of rats wear Duke uniforms and watch a
tape of their basketball team folding in the NCAA tournament.
Sure, the cheesesteak rats might have died. But before keeling over,
they woul have beaten the point- spread, blown the winnings on a
drunken brawl, and blissfully yelled across to the Duke rats, "You
talkin' to me?' We die young, but we live large.
And thanks for the medical advice, I told Dr. Williams, but
Philadelphia is not a count-to-10 city.
"The question is whether it can become one," he said.
"No," I said. "The question is whether it wants to become one, and
the answer is no."
And another thing.
"I'll tell you what we're hostile about. We're hostile about some
professor capitalizing on our natural resources to sell his book."
He had nothing to say. He just did a slow burn, I guess. Frankly, I'm
concerned about his health.
