METROPOLITAN DIARY 'One Friday Night,
I Pulled Into the Tollbooth at the Henry Hudson Bridge’
That Tie
Dear Diary:
I lived in Yonkers in the 1980s, and every day I drove to and from my office in New York City.
One Friday night, I pulled into the tollbooth at the Henry Hudson Bridge, handed the female toll taker a $5 bill and stared blankly out the windshield waiting for my change.
After waiting for what seemed like a minute longer than usual, I looked up to see the toll taker holding my change and looking down.
“That tie does not go with that shirt,” she said in a loud and deliberate voice.
It occurred to me that my wife had said something similar that morning.
“My wife said the same thing,” I replied.
The woman handed me my change.
“Well,” she said, “you should have listened to her.”
— Rich Tomasulo
More Butter, S’il Vous Plait
Dear Diary:
As I went into Zabar’s, a well-dressed older woman in a lovely plum-colored coat went in ahead of me. I encountered her again at the bakery counter, where she was pointing at the croissants.
The counterman, a younger man with a big smile, listened to her patiently.
“Your croissants do not have enough butter,” the woman said with what I took to be a strong French accent.
Obviously well schooled in the art of customer service, the counterman smiled and suggested that she put some butter on them.
“Non,” she said. “They need to be made with more butter.”
The counterman smiled again.
“You can’t please everyone,” he said. “If we did that, then some people would say they have too much butter.”
“Well,” she said, her voice getting louder. “They are not French.”
He smiled even wider.
“No,” he said, “they are mostly New Yorkers.”
— Heidi Olson
Goose Chase
Dear Diary:
Every morning, I take my dog for a walk along the Hudson River. I often hear a cacophony of honking geese that have migrated to the river’s banks to give birth. They can be extremely hostile in the company of their newborns and I know to keep my distance.
One day, I noticed a family of geese there that appeared to be in a panic: Two goslings had somehow gotten trapped on the wrong side of a low fence.
Should I try to help? I know that geese are not friendly on a good day, but these geese and their goslings were in desperate need of an intervention. Should I reach over the fence to try to grab the goslings?
I tried, and they ran in opposite directions.
Desperate to help but realizing that I couldn’t do it alone, I stopped two men and asked if they would assist me. They quickly turned and walked away while shouting that they didn’t want to get involved.
I stopped two younger men as they approached and asked if they would help.
Without hesitating, one jumped into action. He suggested that instead of trying to catch the wayward goslings, we should temporarily pull the low fence up out of the ground. That, he suggested, would allow the goslings to run under it to rejoin their parents.
It was a clever plan and it worked perfectly. I had helped to reunite a family and I was delighted.
— Temi Sacks
Pain and Inflammation
Dear Diary:
I was waiting to pick up a prescription at a CVS store on University Place when I witnessed the following:
An older woman held a bottle of turmeric capsules up in the direction of the pharmacist, who was busily filling prescriptions.
“Should I take these?” the woman asked.
“It depends,” the pharmacist said.
“What are they good for?”
“Pain and inflammation.”
“I don’t have pain and inflammation.”
“Then why would you want to take them?”
“They’re on sale.”
— Bill Herbst
Stopped at the Cemetery
Dear Diary:
The woman who nearly ran me over with her S.U.V. on Metropolitan Avenue last year was headed to the cemetery.
She must have been terrified to see a pair of legs sticking out from under her front fender, where I landed when my bike hit a pothole. The impact wrenched my saddle from its post.
I begged her to take me the rest of the way to Queens College, where I was to teach a class. I can only imagine what she thought of the sweating, grimy person in a helmet who was making this request. Nonetheless, we were soon on our way.
We stopped at Linden Hill Cemetery to visit her husband’s grave.
May his memory be a blessing, I said when she returned to the car.
Back on the road, she asked what subject I taught.
Literature, I said.
Her face lit up and she began to rattle off names: Pushkin! Dostoevsky! Tolstoy! Babel and Akhmatova. And Gogol. Gogol!
It had been her husband’s idea to leave Russia, she said, and now that she was here alone, these were the writers who sustained her.
I told her how much I enjoyed some of them, although in English.
She beamed.
When she dropped me at the campus gate, she asked how I would get home. I told her that I’d manage, and headed off toward class.
— Eric Lehman
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/14/nyregion/metropolitan-diary.html
