I've been asked to name a pet peeve. "Only one?" asks Vicky, who rightly sees me as a recreational curmudgeon. Well, besides sedans, bad drivers, truck back-up beepers, daylight saving time in March, leaf blowers, and grammar-impaired NPR reporters, what is there to be peeved about?
I'll tell you what: the Hampton Jitney video that plays at the takeoff of all trips between the East End and Manhattan and back. The video is verbose. It is pretentious. Pompous. Condescending. Cliché ridden. And it is so, so corny. An animated cartoon that ain't funny. The visuals are clip-art. The voice-over seems to be delivered by Goofy.
The video is a list of dos and don'ts — each do and don't shown in pictures and a few thousand poorly chosen words.
Exact change is "sincerely appreciated" (what would insincerely appreciated look like?). Don't forget your "personal belongings" — as opposed to the impersonal ones? The toilet is decorously referred to as "the facility" (my Jitney-riding friends and I refer to our bathrooms as "the facility" — or just "the facil," as in, "Leah, I'll be right back. I'm going to use your facil").
That smoking is prohibited is illustrated by a wordy discourse beginning, in Goofy-speak, "The Jitney is one, big, no-smoking zone," and ends — finally — with a passenger, who happens to be a horse, throwing a pail of water on a would-be smoker. A real thigh-slapper. Why a horse? How about a fireman?
Many dos start with "A good way to," "It is important to," "It is always a good idea to," "Be sure to." Yes, Goody-Two-Shoes Goofy.
"For the courtesy of your fellow passengers, please. . . ." I think this is asking you to be considerate. Or are the passengers supposed to be courteous to you?
"Be sure to step well in the stepwell. The last one can be a doozie." Puh-leeze.
There's a random picture of a girl in her Jitney seat painting her toenails. Why? Toenail painting, it seems, is not against the rules.
There's a frame of two women in a standoff over a suitcase. The women are identical. Goofy intones, "Many bags are similar to each other. . . ." Yuk yuk. Women as bags. Get it?
These days, due to age and infirmity, I sometimes take the swanky Jitney for double the bucks. Reserved seats, fewer passengers, leg room, movie, many snack and beverage choices, even wine. But we still must suffer the insult of The Video.
Here, on the Ambassador though, it makes me giggle: same horse and pail of water, same "facility," "it's always a good idea to," "for the courtesy of your fellow passengers," "sincerely appreciated," nail-polishing girls, and women as bags.
But Goofy is gone! Swept away by a posh female English accent with unearthly vowels. I've thought hard about this faux Oxbridge mutation with its peculiar vowels. Specifically the O. The O sounds like the German ü or ue. As in "mein Fuehrer." Try "no smoking zone" as "nü smüking züne."
And you haven't lived until you've heard "the last one can be a doozie" in an accent heard nowhere on the planet. But posh.
Gertrude Strong is the nom de plume of a longtime Hampton Jitney rider — and former Jitney driver — "who wishes not to incur the wrath of the Jitney overlord."