Food Cart Find
Dear Diary:
I found a cellphone face down in the street at 57th and Lexington. I grabbed it so it wouldn’t get run over, but there was no good place to leave it.
A traffic officer I asked to hold onto it was too busy and suggested I find a police officer. There was no police officer around, so I did the next best thing: I walked over to a food cart that is always at the intersection.
I asked the vendor if he could hold on to the phone. I live in Queens and didn’t want to take the phone too far from where it had been dropped.
The vendor declined, but then the phone rang. I set it on speaker, and the vendor and I tried to tell the caller where we were, but language barriers made it difficult.
Finally, the vendor grabbed the phone.
“57th and Lexington!” he shouted. “Come get your phone and shish kebab! Shish kebab!”
Then we heard a second voice on the phone, saying he was heading over, then a third voice asking where we were. Across the street we saw one man wearing a yellow jacket and waving his arms and another man walking in our direction. He turned out to be the phone’s owner.
I handed him his phone, the vendor offered him shish kebab and then we all went on our way.
— Levi Fishman
Beethoven on the M4
Dear Diary:
I was on the M4 bus on the way to a class at Manhattan School of Music when I was a student there some years ago.
I was studying the score to Beethoven’s “Waldstein” Sonata as the bus made its way uptown. It was a piece I had been studying for some time.
I couldn’t help noticing that a man who was sitting across the aisle kept looking at me. As he got up to get off the bus, he turned to me.
“Watch out for those octaves in the last movement,” he said. “They are really tricky.”
— Christopher Bliss
Jumble
Dear Diary:
A shoal of large wooden letters by the trash
on Thirtieth Street near Penn Station, pondered
as I went by, there were not many but
turned back thinking I might find her there.
A bit guilty for my daylight scavenging
I hurriedly tried to piece unlikely her
together with a lowercase l, two a’s, one broken,
and two u’s, one for an upside down n
— but no e or r. All day at work I fretted my
return to the scene, but all was cleared except
for, just off the curb, that lipogram e
— eureka for her hapax legomenon!—
and when I came home I carved out the broken
a into a smaller r — and now I have her
in anagrams: “neural,” “unreal,” our “lauren.”
— David Stanford Burr
Caught Short
Dear Diary:
After collecting change in a glass jar on my windowsill for months, I was finally ready to cash in my tattoo fund.
On the way to work, I stopped to use the coin exchange machine at a bank across the street from my Midtown office: $103.87.
At noon, I told my co-workers that I was going down to St. Marks Place.
“The tattoo parlor says they are not busy right now,” I said as I ran out, cash in hand. “See you all after lunch.”
One stop on the express to Union Square, then I jog-walked past the Astor Place cube and onto St. Marks.
I showed the woman at the front desk my design.
“How much will it cost, and how long do you think it’ll take?” I asked.
“$100,” she said. “And it won’t take long — half an hour tops.”
I had barely caught my breath when a young woman with short black bangs, winged eyeliner and latex gloves led me further into the parlor.
She wiped my forearm and began her work.
“It’s a beautiful name,” she said as she drew the last letter with her ink gun.
“It’s my daughter’s,” I gushed. “She turns 1 today.”
I thanked her, hugged her and went to the register.
When it was my turn to pay, I handed the woman $100 and rolled down my sleeve.
“Do you want to leave a tip?” she asked.
I had forgotten that entirely. All I had left was $3.87. I handed it over, mortified.
I guess I shouldn’t go back there again.
— Gabriela Ponce
Blondie Was Playing
Dear Diary:
I was in Central Park on a New Year’s Eve in the 1970s. Blondie was playing, and it was crowded.
A Santa Claus stumbled by.
“Ralph!” he shouted. “Ralph!”
A man to the right of me turned.
“My name’s Ralph,” he said.
Santa, who appeared to be a bit tipsy, threw his arms around the man.
“Any Ralph in a storm,” he said.
— Lynn Novotnak
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