Familiar Feeling
Dear Diary:
I started traveling to New York City from my hometown, Toronto, in the early 2000s. I would visit once or twice a year, usually with my children. As they have gotten older, I’ve been making my annual trip solo.
On my most recent trip, in November 2024, I stayed near Lincoln Center. When it was time to leave, the hotel doorman hailed me a taxi to take me to the airport.
After I got into the cab, the driver and I began chatting about the delicious smelling rice and oxtail stew his wife had just dropped off for him. He told me we had spoken previously about Indian and Senegalese food. I must have looked confused because he then claimed that he knew me.
I said that my son’s girlfriend was from India and that she had made us a feast for Diwali the year before. The driver nodded and said I had told him that before.
I had not been to New York in a year and was incredulous that this man could possibly have remembered a random conversation with a passenger from 12 months ago.
Then, suddenly, I remembered him, too. He had told me the last time we spoke that he was sending one of his teenage children to live with his parents for a while so they could get to know one another.
He explained this time that the child was back home and that all had gone well.
After getting out of the cab at the airport, I turned back to him.
“Thank you,” I said. “See you next year!”
— Patricia O’Connell
On the F
Dear Diary:
I was on an uptown F train that was not particularly crowded. At some point, I sensed that a man sitting across from me was trying to get my attention.
I lowered my book, tilted my head downward and focused intently on the page in front of me to block his effort to engage with me.
I noticed him relaxing back in his seat and felt relieved that reading, which I use like armor to keep the bizarre aspects of the subway from percolating in, had saved me once again.
After the doors swooshed shut at 42nd Street, I prepared to hop off at the next stop, Rockefeller Center. As I opened my purse to put away my book, I inadvertently made eye contact with the man I had been avoiding.
He lifted a well-worn paperback from his lap so I could see the cover. We were reading the same book.
“Book club!” he said, smiling.
— Natasha Guarda
‘Our Town’
Dear Diary:
I was visiting New York City for the first time in several years as the escort for my 91-year-old mother, who is still quite spry but no longer travels alone. I took my responsibilities seriously and ran interference for her on the street and in other crowded places.
As a treat, I got us tickets for a matinee of “Our Town.” Walking to the theater from the bus stop, we were more than a block away when we came across a long line of people.
It wasn’t until we were halfway down the block that I realized the line was for “Our Town” ticket holders. I told my mother to just step into the line where we were at that point.
A woman behind us immediately began to chastise my mother for cutting the line.
Embarrassed but indignant, I tried to shame the woman.
“So you really want my 91-year-old mother to walk all the way to the back of the line?” I said.
The woman looked my mother up and down.
“She looks pretty good,” she said.
I was fuming as we walked back to the end of the line. My mother, however, looked delighted as she trotted alongside me.
“Did you hear her say I look pretty good?” she said.
— Cathy Winks
When It Began
Dear Diary:
Over 45 years ago, I took a class in sales at a building at West 41st Street and Eighth Avenue. At the end of the first night, I yelled out: “Anyone going to the East Side?”
“I am,” said one woman in a class of 15 to 20 people.
Making our way east across 42nd Street, we walked past peep shows, food vendors and pickpockets.
We walked past Bryant Park, which was dangerous and drug-infested then, and on to Madison Avenue, where she caught a bus uptown. I continued on to Third Avenue and my apartment.
Neither of us can remember the exact year, and I couldn’t name the course we were at. But I do remember it was the night I met my best friend, Joan.
— Caryl Ehrlich
Frankly Speaking
Dear Diary:
I was rushing through Times Square when I paused at a street vendor for a quick bite.
“Hot dog with mustard, please,” I said.
A hand reached out with a hot dog. I noticed it had brown mustard on it.
“Great,” I said. “Brown mustard, not yellow.”
“Never,” a voice from inside the cart said. “Yellow is for people from Ohio.”
— Donald Christensen
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