For a Dancer
Dear Diary:
Fresh out of college in 1990, I moved to the Upper West Side. I became friendly with a former New York City Ballet dancer who lived in my building and mostly went out between dusk and dawn.
Her career had ended in the early 1970s, and because of damage to her knees from dancing, she usually traveled by wheelchair to Fairway or to swim at the Reebok Sports Club.
I took her to Cirque du Soleil and dinners out. She took me to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she seemed to know every guard and secret passageway.
As the ’90s ended, I moved away, yet she continued to call on my birthday every year for nearly 25 years.
I often let the calls roll to voice mail and didn’t always respond promptly. Still, every year, there would be her same sweet Southern voice.
Three years ago, she was hospitalized after a fall, declined rapidly and wound up on life support. She had never married and had no children, and the family she did have lived out of state.
She did, however, have a constellation of friends like me, and I was ultimately the one who was there when doctors took her off life support.
At the suggestion of relatives and other friends, I played her favorite opera, “L’elisir d’amore,” as she lay motionless and silent. (I also sneaked in some Rolling Stones (including “Ventilator Blues,” which I know she would have snickered at.)
It wasn’t until an email the next day that I learned she was dead, and that her annual birthday call would never come again.
— Mark Garrahan
Clowning Around
Dear Diary:
It was a hot July afternoon, and I was on the No. 5 train returning to my law office. I took a seat, loosened my tie and looked at my phone.
Across the car was a mother with an irritable young daughter who would not be quiet or sit still.
When the train doors opened at 14th Street, in walked a clown in full regalia, presumably on his way to a birthday party or some other clown gig.
The cranky child stopped whining immediately. She tugged urgently at her mother while pointing at the clown.
Sensing an audience, he approached the girl, pulled several balloons from his jacket pocket, quickly came up with a reasonable balloon-animal version of the parrot on her T-shirt and handed it to her.
The dozen or so people in the car erupted in applause. The clown, without a word, got off the train when it pulled into the 42nd Street station.
— Peter B. Cohen
Likely Story
Dear Diary:
I was walking down Clinton Street on the Lower East Side when I passed a couple of guys sitting on a bench.
“You look like you’re in a witness-protection program,” one said.
“Excuse me?” I asked.
“You look like you’re in a witness-protection program for sure,” he repeated.
“Well, I’m not!” I said.
“But of course,” he replied, “you’d have to say that!”
— Annette Rose-Shapiro
Lock Talk
Dear Diary:
I had just finished my workout at the Dodge Y.M.C.A. on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn and couldn’t remember which locker I had put my stuff in.
A guy who looked to be, like me, in his 60s, noticed me going from row to row futilely trying my combination on every black Master Lock.
“You forgot which locker?” he said. “I have a system for that.”
I said I had a system for remembering my lock’s combination, but not the locker number.
He asked how I remembered the combination.
“I take each number and think about which Yankee had that number when I was a kid,” I explained.
His eyes brightened.
“I do the same with old Mets players!” he exclaimed.
I laughed.
“Well,” I said. “We’ve got nothing else to talk about, then.”
He asked which Yankees.
He’s a Mets fan, I thought to myself. What harm would it do?
“Roy White, Lou Piniella and Sparky Lyle,” I said, lowering my voice to a murmur.
He didn’t hesitate.
“Six, 14, 28!” he exclaimed.
There were chuckles all around.
“Time to get a new lock,” I heard someone say.
— Tom Guiltinan
Tompkins Square Park
Dear Diary:
I live next to Tompkins Square Park. On Sundays, I like to grab coffee, stand outside the dog park gate and watch the dogs play.
On a particularly heavy Sunday, I found myself wanting to be among the dogs, hoping it would lift my spirits.
My chest tightened as I walked through the gate past the sign that said: “No people without dogs.”
Once inside, I sat on a bench, trying to relax and blend in. A man sitting beside me struck up a casual conversation.
“Which one’s yours?” he asked after a moment.
I pointed to a black-and-white terrier far away.
He followed my finger, paused and smiled.
“That’s my dog,” he said.
— Lynn Nguyen
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