Vacation Slides
April 25, 2000
Stories from my first trip to New York City, at least since I was four years old.


-- April 18, 2000 --

It's my third night in Dallas, and I've been watching rather disgusting amounts of television, with each successive moment reminding me even more adamantly than the last just how glad I am that I don't own a TV myself, and yet not quite adamantly enough to prevent the next such moment from inevitably arriving. 
But I did finally silence my enemy.  For now, anyway.

Just a week ago, I was telling a friend of mine that I would be coming here for work,  and I wanted to call Dallas the Armpit of America, but unfortunately, that title is already in common usage as a loving way of saying New Jersey.  So in a flash of brilliance, I dubbed Dallas the Asshole of America.  It's even in about the right spot, geographically speaking.  But that isn't really fair.  I guess I don't truly hate Dallas.  I'm not enamored of the place, sure, but stop and think for a sec, and really, there are nice people here.  Nice people just like there are anywhere else.  Just like there are in New York City.

Yeah, New York City.  The week before last, I took five days off work to spend nine days seeing New York City for the first time since I was five years old.  Translated, that means I saw New York for the first time ever, and yes, I've already been made aware of just how much of a lamer that makes me for never having made the trip during the five years I lived in Boston, just a hop, skip, and a frisbee huck away.

That tingling you're feeling is your spidey sense trying to warn you that this is nothing other than the email equivalent of assaulting one's friends with vacation slides.  Ready?

...

I rode the subway and my train got stuck.  I slept while firefighters put out an apartment fire four floors above me.  I ate a knish.  I gave a tourist directions.

I arrived on a Saturday morning red-eye, walked around a lot, and met up with several college friends, some long unseen, some long lost.  By Tuesday, I felt that I had gotten a decent feel for the city, and I could have gone home then and been very much satisfied with the trip. That night, two high school buddies from LA arrived, and a whole other vacation fell out of the sky and into my lap before the week came to a close.

The weather was unexpectedly warm, then cold and rainy, then nice.  On my last day, I came down the the lobby with my bags and saw snow faling thick and soft.  I walked twenty blocks uptown instead of taking the subway unable to wipe the idiotic grin off my face.  Well, the grin was good for about seventeen blocks, and then I started feeling a bit cold.

I impeded the efficient operations of the MTA and got a good yelling at over the PA from the subway operator.  Five of us were going to dinner, and since there were locals among us, I was content to relax and leave my map in my backpack for a change.  Some stops later, the station outside the train says Bleecker St.  Bleecker St.?  'Yikes! Hey, guys, isn't this where we should get off?'  Much inaction followed as people slowly came out of their subway trances.  I jumped out of my seat and got off the train, a couple others moved less quickly, and a couple hardly at all.  The herd was confused.  The doors began to close and I reached out and stopped them as I'd seen so many others do.  The herd was still confused.  I think the doors tried to close a second time and I stopped that, too, before I gave up and jumped back on just before they moved to close a third time.  A tug on my shoulder stopped me from getting very far in from the doors. I turned around and saw that they'd c
ome closer to successfully closing than they had on their previous two attempts, but the last half inch was occupied by the shoulder strap of my backpack, the rest of which remained resolutely and visibly on the other side of the door glass. I was wondering if backpack would have an exciting trip to the next station this way, when the doors, after a deliberate pause, reluctantly opened and closed one last time, allowing me and my backpack to quickly slink into a seat while a verbal barrage erupted from the speakers. Unfortunately, I can't tell you what he yelled, because it was so garbled that no one could make out a word of it.

I learned what Soho, Lower East Side, and Uptown mean.

I met a pretty girl.  I met a fellow who thought I was a pretty attractive guy.  There was little danger of anything more coming of either encounter, but they were both kind of nice all the same.

I climbed up the Statue of Liberty.  I watched a play.  I saw an inordinate number of people wearing black.  I had the most pathetic six dollar pancake-with-strawberries breakfast of my life.
I walked around the corner of a building at Columbia and found a smile I hadn't seen for six years, a radiant burst-of-sunlight-sort-of-smile that poured through six year clouds and left them in tatters, a glowing everything's-okay-sort-of-smile that soaked in down to the bone wherever its rays landed, carrying the whisper of Forgiveness, easing the grip of six year guilt, melting, warming, healing, all in that instant.

I opened doors and people said thank you.  I stepped into elevators and people said hello.  I asked a passerby to take a picture and...well, she gave me a you-must-be-joking look and walked right on by.  But it was snowing and cold, so I'll give her that one.  How's this: I got off the subway at an unfamiliar and near-empty station one late night and was unsure whether to go left or right to find an open exit.  An aloof, slickly dressed black fellow who had just gotten on the train actually tried to stop the doors from closing in order to point me in the right direction.

I came to New York expecting to find the rudest, most calloused, clammed up, shuttered in, build-six-inch-think-solid-steel-walls-around-me-and-damned-if-anyone's-getting-in-or-any-little-exposed-bit-of-me-is-getting-out people in America.  And I may well have found them.  But when you expect the worst in people, you appreciate every single act of kindness, every smile, every thank you.  And when not a single one is taken for granted, it's amazing how warm the world feels.  Even New York City.

We had a picnic in Central Park, and the sun was warm, and the sky was blue, and people were smiling.  We asked a couple near us if they wouldn't mind taking a picture.  And they were glad to.

--Yong



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