Neighbor’s Noise
Dear Diary:
I rent a sunny, one-bedroom, corner apartment in Prospect Heights. I have lived there in bliss for six years, not just because I love the unit and the neighborhood, but also because the long-vacant unit to my right provided indelible silence.
While working from home several months ago, though, I heard a hammer pounding against the wall behind my bedroom headboard, installing what I later learned was a bracket for a television.
What followed was weeks of a Gen Z night owl blasting alternative R&B and neo-soul as I tried to fall asleep. Our musical tastes aligned. Our schedules did not.
I found myself stepping into my bedroom each evening, listening to determine whether I would be able to sleep or would have to use my pillows as makeshift noise-canceling headphones.
I argued with myself nightly, wondering whether I should say something, but stopped for fear of being painted as the grumpy millennial next door.
Then one night at about 11, at the hint of a bass line and driven by workplace anxiety and sleep-deprivation, I jumped out of bed, marched next door and began an irrational rant at the foot of my neighbor’s door.
To my surprise, he barely let me finish before apologizing profusely. We ended almost warmly.
The next afternoon, as I awaited the delivery of an overpriced salad, I opened my door to find a bouquet of tulips and a handwritten apology complete with perfect penmanship and hand-doodled hearts.
— Sabina Rizvi
At the Embers
Dear Diary:
It was the early 1960s, and we decided the hippest place to go post-prom was the Embers, a nightclub on East 54th Street.
The prom ended around 10 p.m., and four couples, the guys in baby blue tuxedos and the girls in flouncy dresses, arrived at the club shortly after.
We had a reservation and were shown to a banquette, where the maître d’ personally took our drink orders: 7&7s or Singapore slings.
We listened to the jazz, smoked and were suave as hell. After a while, I signaled the maître d’ and asked for another drink.
He smiled.
“Sorry, no,” he said in a low voice.
“How come?” I asked.
“I didn’t ask anyone for ID and I’m not going to ask anyone for ID,” he said, again in a low voice. “You all got a drink. Let’s leave it at that.”
— Mike Maguire
To the Rescue
Dear Diary:
I was on the 1 train. We stopped at Columbus Circle. A woman in a mechanical wheelchair tried to get on but got stuck.
She stood and asked for help with the chair. A few of us tried to pick it up, but it wouldn’t budge.
The conductor appeared, lifted the chair, put it in the car and the returned to his booth. The woman sat down and told me the chair weighed over 200 pounds.
Talk about a superconductor.
— Linda Herskovic
Found and Lost
Dear Diary:
I was on my way out of my Brooklyn building one morning when I noticed a set of keys lying on the stoop.
I decided to leave them there, thinking that whoever lost them might come looking for them. But that evening, they were slipped through our mail slot by a helpful delivery person who thought they belonged to us.
I took a picture of the keys and made a sign that said, “Did you lose these?” along with my phone number.
The next morning, I put the keys back on the stoop and posted the sign at the entrance to the park across the street.
My phone soon rang. It was my next-door neighbor.
“The keys are mine!” he said. “Thank you so much for finding them! Can I pick them up when I get back from walking the dog?”
“Sure,” I said. “They are right on our stoop.”
He called back later to say they weren’t there when he came to look for them.
Somebody must have taken them. What could we do?
I made a new sign. It said: “If you took these please bring them back!” I put it on the stoop in the same spot, with a small ceramic cup weighing it down.
When I got home, there were the keys, sitting in the cup.
— Isabel Kraut
Elevator Encounter
Dear Diary:
I stepped onto the elevator of my Upper West Side building after an early morning run to Staples. I was carrying four large rolls of paper towel wrapped in plastic.
An older woman I didn’t recognize got on with a fluffy white dog.
As soon as the door closed, the dog began to growl and bark at me.
“Something I did?” I asked.
“It’s not you,” the woman said. “It’s the paper towels. He hates them.”
— Jeremy Estabrooks
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