Dan's Papers - December 21, 2007

I took the Hampton Jitney into the city the other evening, and found myself sitting behind a woman who was reading my newspaper. Out of curiosity, I decided to watch her. If I leaned a little sideways, I could watch everything through the crack between the seats.

She started at the front, and proceeded to slowly flip through the paper one page at a time, passing the full page ads in the front of the paper, for Coldwell Banker, Gems of the Past, Gurney's Inn, East End Motorsports and others, and, out of curiosity, I found myself looking to see where she would stop to read something. Of course, I hoped that where she stopped and took the time to read in some detail would be when she got to the stories that I wrote. I take a lot of pride in these stories.

Here was her journey. She got to the contents page and didn't read anything on that. Then she got to the stories.

She looked at the first story, about a man who picks up a cell phone on the street in front of Dan's Papers that isn't his but gets caught on the neighboring store's surveillance camera. We had a big picture of him and his yellow van. She turned the page.

My next story was about the takeover of the North Fork Bank. She turned the page.

She turned the page when she got to my next story, about a made-for-TV horror movie that was being filmed in Bulgaria and how one of our kids was in it, but she turned the page. She looked at the Hampton Subway newsletter and turned the page. She looked at a story written by T. J. Clemente about a $30 million donation of some farmland by John White and she turned the page. Then she stopped briefly to look at some pictures of a Christmas lighting in front of the Stony Brook Southampton windmill, a remembrance of Bobby Van of Bridgehampton, who had just passed away, and an interview with actor Lorraine Bracco. And she turned all the pages.

I thought maybe she would just turn the pages of everything in the paper at that point, which made me think - why is she looking at this in the first place? - when she got to the page with South O' the Highway on it, and stopped. She was either reading a gossip item about Steven Spielberg or looking at an ad by London Jewelers of a Cartier watch next to it, I couldn't tell, but it was a start, I guess.

Then she continued turning pages, stopping briefly when she got to the continuation of the story about the horror movie being made in Bulgaria and finding herself faced with pictures of a whole lot of people dressed up as Romans, confused, I believe because she hadn't read the beginning, but she quickly got over that and turned the page.

On the next page, we had a picture of Bill Clinton shopping for baskets, but she didn't look at it. Instead, she looked at a page of photographs of people at parties, which included more than a few celebrities. She stared at that for a while. Then she continued on.

The articles about the North Fork got short shrift. Then, on page 47, she stopped. She was looking at a picture of a Faberge egg in 24 carat gold and guilloche enamel for $28,500. And then, after checking what was on the other side of this page, she proceeded to tear it out and put it in what looked to me to be a very expensive handbag.

At this point, I noticed she had numerous silver rings on her fingers. She had black nail polish, and she was wearing a fur coat. She seemed to be about forty years old.

She continued on. An article titled "Men's Holiday Fashion" did not interest her. Nor did a half page story in our Gadgets and Toys supplement on a smash-box brush available at www.smashbox.com. She paused briefly, too briefly I thought, to look at the holiday upcoming events. Then she looked too briefly again at our Kid Kalendar.

The main feature in our Arts and Entertainment Guide, a story about Seussical the Musical at Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor, stopped her. There was a big picture of an actor named Raphael Odell Shapiro dressed up as the Cat in the Hat that interested her, and, for a minute I thought she would rip that out, but then she didn't.

She continued on, stopping only for a moment to scan some movie reviews, Silvia Lehrer's Cooking Column, a restaurant review, our Side Dish column, the art gallery listings, our health, beauty and fitness columns (on the Y Factor and on Inspiration), then zipped past the letters column, the police blotter, the service directory and then she stopped. She was staring at an item in our help wanted column. But which one I could not be sure. It was either housekeeper wanted or manager for the Ocean Dunes Condominiums wanted.

Now I was completely confused.

Next, she went through the real estate for sale or rent section without stopping and then stopped to look at our column called EVERYTHING OVER A MILLION, which is about all the real estate transactions. A property in East Quogue sold for $1.1 million. A property on First Neck Lane in Southampton sold for $9.8 million. Something on Willis Pond Road in Montauk went for $2.9 million. And then that was it.

She finally arrived at the back of the paper, turned it sideways, folded it in half, which I thought was unnecessarily rough to be doing to my newspaper, and then stuck it in the back pocket of the seat in front of her.

Then she took out her cell phone. Just two seats in front of her, on a pane of glass, was the sign about no cell phone calls. But that didn't faze her.