Metropolitan Diary; Wow

Dear Diary:

I’m standing on the northeast corner of 57th Street and Avenue of the Americas, waiting for the uptown No. 7 bus, when an agitated woman in a brown coat rushes up the street beside me, holding a small black purse open in her hands and calling, “Laura! Laura! Laura!”

She accosts every woman. “Are you Laura?” she asks them, the desperation in her voice increasing as she progresses, luckless, up the avenue.

At the corner of 58th, out of earshot but still within sight, a tall young woman in a black coat does a 180 in obvious response to the 15th call of “Laura!” Her hands fly up to her face in excitement, and then reach out to take the proffered purse. There is some animated conversation between them, culminating with brown coat holding up her hands in refusal of something offered by black coat.

Brown coat then hurries back down the avenue, hesitating at our bus stop only long enough to say: “That was Laura. She’s getting married in an hour. She had thousands of dollars in there to pay the caterer.”

With that, brown coat rushes off, no doubt in search of other good deeds to do.

Thomas Mowrey

Metropolitan Diary; I Heart NY

Dear Diary:

My 4-year-old son, Micah, and I have the following morning routine:

We take the F train to Seventh Avenue. Micah gets his “morning paper” from the AM New York guy standing at the subway entrance and we walk to the bus stop. At the bus stop, Micah begs me to let him hold my MetroCard and I say no.

One day in January, I was tired, it was cold, we were late. I relented and gave Micah my MetroCard to hold. The bus came, and it was crowded. As we were getting on, I noticed Micah taking off his gloves, and no MetroCard. He had dropped it somewhere. We rode illicitly to school.

The next morning, same routine. We get up the stairs from the subway and Micah goes to get his morning paper. But this time, the AM New York guy stops him and says: “My man, I have been waiting for you all morning. I have something that you dropped yesterday,” and indeed pulls out of his wallet my MetroCard, which he found on the curb after the bus pulled away.

(Of course, then Micah asked to hold it again, because now Mommy has two.)

-Amy Sandgrund

Metropolitan Diary: Hmmmm

Dear Diary:
At a memorial service for my mother, who died recently at 98, her granddaughter Leslie recalled a walk they took on the Upper West Side.
Passing a sign that said “Staples,” her grandmother asked, “How can they make a living selling such a small item?”
-Vicki Schott

Dear Diary:
Scene on the D train heading downtown during the holidays: vagabond in filthy, tattered clothes, wearing every germ known to man and orating forcefully from the Bible.
At 14th Street, a woman kissed him on the cheek, then exited the train.
-Gena Raps

Metropolitan Diary: A Shoe to the Face

Dear Diary

While walking past a shoe store on Madison Avenue on a cold December morning, I decided to buy a pair of Clarks desert boots. They have not changed from their original design that I, along with millions of other college students from the 1960s, wore as we marched in protest of the war that raged in Southeast Asia.

Upon arriving home I noticed one significant difference. Instead of noting that the boots are made in England, the inside tongue now clearly reads “Made in Vietnam.”

-Bob Fisher

Metropolitan Diary; I Am G-d, Your Blackberry

ON THE L.I.R.R.

Their fingers clack away on tiny keys,

fretting, as if counting rosaries,

heads bowed in homage to the deity

to whom all praise is due, the BlackBerry.

To iPods wired, into their brains infuse

music that eclipses any muse.

Time and space around them they invade

as phone talk scars my quiet, makes me trade

reading and thinking to hear of what they spent

or ate or who said what — my ears are bent!

No quiet stillness can they seem to hold;

to small machines their restless souls they’ve sold.

One might have the makings of a poet,

but plugged in thus, will probably never know it.

-Sheri Lindner

Lifesavers

Amazing work. Kol hakavod

lol

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Homeless Skater Rapper/Preacher

Metropolitan Diary; Rose Is Rose

Dear Diary:

My mother was placing an order for a pizza delivery. When the clerk asked her name, she said, “Rosenfeld,” and started to spell it: “R-O- —”

The clerk stopped her and said: “You don’t need to spell it. I’m Birnbaum.”

-Amy Shaffer Crawley

*****

Dear Diary:

On my way home on Christmas Day from Pennsylvania Station via Amtrak, I left the station not by the usual exit, but by one in a little-used area.

A homeless man who appeared to be inebriated was reclining midway up the steps. As I passed him, he muttered: “Nice haircut. You didn’t get that in New Jersey.” Allie Tabak

wow