Date Night
Dear Diary:
My husband and I were on the C. It was a weeknight, long past rush hour. There were only four other passengers on the car.
We sat in the middle. At the end of the bench, a man was leaning against the railing. I barely glanced at him as my husband and I chatted and scrolled on our phones for a few stops.
Suddenly, out of the blue, the man at the end of the bench leaned toward my husband and extended a slightly opened package.
“Excuse me,” he said. “Do you want to try?”
“Best dates in the world,” he continued. “The best. From Africa. From Algeria.”
“Oh!” my husband said, reaching over and pulling one off the stalk. “Yes, they look good.”
He popped the date into his mouth.
I was confused by the casual familiarity between my husband and this man but did not want be rude. So I took a date too. It was sticky and sweet but not overwhelmingly so, as some dates can be.
“Be careful,” the man said, gesturing toward the pit.
Later, as we were getting off the train, my husband said he had been watching the man eat his dates, perhaps too eagerly. And when the man realized that he was being watched, he had decided to share.
— Dichaba McGinty
Christmas Eve
Dear Diary:
We were visiting our son in Astoria for Christmas. He was couch-surfing at the apartment of a friend who had gone someplace warm for the holidays. There were no decorations in the apartment, not even a poinsettia.
We went out to a Christmas Eve service somewhere in Manhattan and stopped for Chinese food afterward. When we were done, we headed to the subway.
On the way, we saw a Christmas tree vendor closing up. It was close to midnight. He had a three-foot tree on display, complete with lights and a wooden stand.
How much, I asked.
He shrugged and said I could have it for free.
Giggling, I carried the tree through the turnstile and onto the train. We rode with it back to Astoria and then brought it up to the apartment where my son was staying.
It lit up our Christmas celebration the next morning.
— Donna Lane
Unusual Pause
Dear Diary:
I was walking to work down Park Avenue from 72nd Street on a beautiful spring morning.
I saw a slender, well-groomed man in a nicely tailored suit walking ahead of me. He was carrying an impressive briefcase.
As we got to 62nd Street, the man approached a building that had a shiny, black marble facade. He set his briefcase down inches from the wall and then, to my horror, licked the marble wall.
After a moment, he retrieved his briefcase and continued on his way.
— Patricia von Buelow
The Friday Dance
Dear Diary:
I live near Union Square, and I walked my dog around the Con Edison loading dock in the mornings before work.
At some point, I became friendly with the manager at the plant. If I saw him, I would greet him with a hug, and we would talk for a minute or two.
When I saw him one Friday, we were both so happy that it was Friday that we just started to dance.
It became a habit. Every Friday, around 7:30 a.m., we would dance. Sometimes, he would “do” the music and sometimes I would. Sometimes it would be a short ditty, and sometimes we would get an audience. (He was a much better dancer than me.)
A few years ago, I was walking down the street, and a woman pointed at me.
“Oh my goodness,” she said. “It’s you!”
I didn’t know her from Adam, and I’m pretty good with faces. Nonetheless, I said hello.
It turned out that she lived across Third Avenue and had happened to see the Friday dance one morning.
After that, she said, every Friday around 7:30 a.m., she would wait with her cat at her window for the Friday Dance to begin.
— Monique Morgan
Trivia Night
Dear Diary:
I was on my way home from work. I decided to walk up Third Avenue for a change. I got hungry as I reached 82nd Street and decided to pop into a bar for a pint of Guinness and a bite.
I soon found myself chatting with a genial guy celebrating his first day of work in a new job. We clinked glasses to toast the occasion. A woman sitting nearby chimed in to say that she had just interviewed for a job. In swooped her glass to join ours.
Our celebration was interrupted by the announcement that it was trivia night. The three of us looked at one another, shrugged and nodded.
We banded together to deliberate over Beyoncé’s new title track, slalom skiing and a radioactive element with a short half-life that glows blue. (“Einsteinium,” I blurted out from somewhere in the recesses of my brain.)
We finished trivia night strong, drank our dregs and branded ourselves Team Einsteinium. Then, without exchanging numbers or social media profiles, we waved goodbye and went our separate ways.
— Irene Walsh
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