The Boston performance drug

DATELINE: 11/27/09. DORCHESTER, MASS. Heh. The day after Thanksgiving and everybody in Dorchester seems a little logey. No one will go on record saying this is business as usual. Though Dorchester has a reputation as being the most relaxed of Bostons neighborhoods (as well as the biggest and the best!), this year's Black Friday seems to find people a bit more like somnambulists on the sidewalks marching to Morpheus' drumbeat. If none of this article makes sense yet, you must not have attended one of Dorchester's public elementary schools.

People like to nap after a Thanksgiving meal. They blame it on the tryptophan in the turkey. People in Dorchester like to nap every day of the year and they don't devour any more turkey than anyone else in Boston. People in Dorchester are relaxed though and they count their blessings. Everyday in Dorchester is Thanksgiving. If that fact is true, so is this: every day is also the day after Thanksgiving.

Can you feel a burst of thankfulness for living in Dorchester coming on about now? I do.

Is it tryptophan that makes Dorchester so easy-going and easy-to-get-along-in? No. It's Dotamine, a drug native to Dorchester's air and society. It's a phermone that builds patience and muscle and animal magnetism. If someone could figure out how to bottle it, it would change your life. As it is, the only way to benefit from Dotamine is to move to Dorchester. In a week's time you won't suffer from ulcers, migraines or a spastic colon. You will be like a Chinese sage sipping tea beside a mountain stream listening to the song of cicadas and the wing beats of a lone heron overhead.

I was talking to someone at Ashmont Station this morning waiting for the Mattapan High Speed. He was nodding off as we discussed the rain but all of a sudden he snapped to attention. Ten feet away, an umbrella dropped to the pavement. This man swooped over like a hawk, caught the umbrella's handle and cradled it into the woman's hand from which it had been shaken loose. She thanked him for his intervention. She didn't get a drop of spatter either from above or below on her hairdo.
When I feel sleepy but swagger-y and Dorchester-y, I like to listen to a little Montefiore Cocktail.