METROPOLITAN DIARY
‘I Paid It No Mind and Kept My Head Low, Glued to My Music’
Running late to work, quarters to spare should an emergency arise and more reader tales of New York City in this week’s Metropolitan Diary.
Running Late
Dear Diary:
It was a Monday morning in 1985, and I was running late for work. I barely had time to put on makeup and brush my hair before dashing out the door of my Cobble Hill apartment.
When I got to the sidewalk, I hit my stride. With a Walkman wedged in my pocket and music filling my ears, I loped down the six blocks to the subway, bopping along happily to Madonna’s “Material Girl.”
I still had my headphones in when I got on the train. I quickly sensed a ripple of mirth around me. Somebody said something, and people started to laugh. I paid it no mind and kept my head low, glued to my music.
When the doors opened at the next stop, a woman in a crisp business suit brushed past me as I stood near the door. She motioned for me to turn off my Walkman.
“You have your curlers on,” she said.
— Reni Roxas
Emergency Quarters
Dear Diary:
Every morning before I left for school, my mother would hand me an emergency quarter. This was back when cellphones were a luxury and you couldn’t turn a corner in New York without seeing a pay phone.
“Only use this if you absolutely must,” she said as I slipped the coin into my pocket, where it would sit next to the one she had given me the day before.
I spent Fridays after school in a small barbershop in Corona, Queens, either getting a haircut myself or accompanying a friend who was getting one. Every Friday, an older Dominican man would walk into the shop pulling a red-and-white camping cooler.
Inside the cooler was a black bag. Inside the bag was what I had looked forward to all week.
The smell of fried dough would overwhelm the combined scent of talcum powder, barbicide and bay rum that had lingered in the air through the day. A well-trained nose could also pick up the scent of onions, olives and seasoned ground beef. Chicken, too, if the man had any left.
“Empanadas, one dollar and twenty-five,” he would bellow as the barbers continued cutting hair without flinching.
Every Friday, I would dig deep into my pocket and fish around for five quarters, one for every day of the week.
This is as good an emergency as anything, I would think to myself before making my request.
“You have any chicken left?”
— Carlos Matias
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/21/nyregion/metropolitan-diary.html
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