Memory Trick
Dear Diary:
I was waiting for the bus on Amsterdam Avenue and standing close enough to hear two friends talking.
One woman was explaining to the other that she had discovered a way to remember short notes she read.
“I read it,” she said. “I repeat it. I recite it. I write it.”
“I love that!” I said, moving in closer. “Could you say it again?”
As she did, I wrote it in my phone.
The bus arrived.
“Come on,” the woman with the advice said. “I’ll ride with you.”
She waved to her friend, and we got on the bus for the trip uptown.
— Jane Seskin
Christmas Past
Dear Diary:
On a brisk winter day in the early 1970s, I walked with my father in the area just north of the East Village where he had grown up in the 1930s and where Stuyvesant Town is now.
As we strolled with woolen scarves wound tightly about our necks, he showed me where Christmas tree sellers had kept themselves warm by making fires in a large metal garbage can.
Picking up the pace to stay warm, we saw vendors selling sweet potatoes, chestnuts and pretzels, all heated over charcoal fires. A hot pretzel kept one of my hands warm.
My grandparents had sold their grocery-deli in Hell’s Kitchen a few years before, and my grandmother now lived alone in a high-rise apartment building.
We decided to surprise her with a small tabletop tree, so we bought one in Midtown and stuffed it into the back seat of a cab we flagged down.
She cried with glee when we came in the door with my father holding the tree over his shoulder after dropping pine needles all over the elevator and hallway.
The two of them looked at each other and burst into laughter before including me in their private joke.
Back when they lived on 16th Street, people had disposed of their trees by dropping them out the window. Neighborhood children would pile the trees up like miniature pyramids.
My grandmother’s face soon went from a grin to a more serious expression.
“Now I’m way up on the 14th floor,” she said to my father. “Where are all the kids going to be when I’m done with this tree?”
— Kathryn Anne Sweeney-James
Bad Nanny
Dear Diary:
My young son was scaling a structure at a playground in Central Park. I was on a bench nearby with a novel. I had one eye on him and one on my book.
I was 28 and two years into my new life in New York City. I might have felt like a proper New Yorker, but my strong British accent gave me away. My son preferred first names to something like “Mummy.”
“Sarah!” he called. “Play with me.”
“In a minute,” I said. “Let me finish this chapter.”
Two other mothers had been watching. One shook her head.
“You’re a bad nanny,” she said. “Sitting there reading your book. Go play with the boy.”
I carried on reading.
The other woman leaned forward.
“You need to give me your employer’s name and number,” she said. “They should know you’re not doing your job.”
I dutifully gave her my husband’s name and our home number. She wrote it down carefully.
She never called.
— Sarah Hunt
The Haircut
Dear Diary:
It was a Friday evening in March, and I desperately needed a haircut. I booked an appointment at 6:30 p.m., the last slot available that day, at a nearby barbershop, and got it done.
The next morning was particularly windy, and I couldn’t find my winter hat. Running out the door, I grabbed a baseball cap and stuffed it in my jacket pocket.
Later that afternoon, as I was heading for the Bedford Avenue subway stop, the wind picked up, making for a brisk walk.
I pulled the baseball cap over my head, the hood of my sweatshirt over my ears and the hood of my jacket over them both. It looked foolish, but it was effective.
I got on the train and was still shivering when it passed under the East River and arrived at the First Avenue stop.
The doors opened, and a man got on. I recognized his face but couldn’t immediately place it.
I looked down, trying to jog my memory. Then I looked at him again, and it clicked: my barber from the day before.
At that moment, he turned and nodded to me and then glanced at my excessively covered head.
“It was that bad, huh?” he said.
— Philip McHugh
Picking Pickles
Dear Diary:
My wife and I went to a deli in the East Village for some pastrami.
While I waited at the counter for the meat and a loaf of rye bread, my wife went to the pickle bucket. She stood there picking up one pickle at a time and dropping it back in.
The woman at the counter watched her do this for a little while before speaking.
“There are no gold ones there, dearie,” she said.
— Michael L. Counts
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