‘They Pronounced Me Safe and Then Started Commenting About the Place’

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/17/nyregion/metropolitan-diary.html

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Dear Diary:

I smelled gas and called Con Ed’s emergency number. They said they would send a trained mechanic within 45 minutes.

Three minutes later, a hook and ladder came clanging down the street. Eight firefighters walked through my apartment. After checking around, they pronounced me safe and then started commenting about the place.

“This hallway is so long,” one said.

“Fifty-five feet,” I said.

”How many bedrooms?” another asked.

“Four,” I said, “but two are 8 by 10.”

“This woodwork is just beautiful.”

“Thank you. Mahogany and rosewood.”

“You’re not planning on moving anytime soon, are you?”

I gave them a bag of white-chocolate macadamia nut cookies and thanked them for coming.

Two Con Ed workers showed up just as the firefighters were leaving. They did a very thorough check using rods that clicked like Geiger counters. I thanked them profusely and led them to the door.

We shook hands. They lingered.

“Are you going to give us cookies, too?” one of them asked.

— Sylvia Calabrese

Dear Diary:

I was standing at the corner of 31st Street and Sixth Avenue on the anniversary of my father’s death.

An M.T.A. bus dispatcher approached me and asked where I was going.

Up Sixth Avenue toward the fifties, I said.

Follow me, he said.

He led me to an empty bus that was idling nearby.

My driver is late and he will drive you to your destination without any stops, the dispatcher said. And, he added, the fare is on us.

I boarded the empty bus and introduced myself to the driver. He said his name was France.

France? I said. Is that truly your name? My father was from France. Was he sending me a signal.

Off we went up Sixth Avenue, not stopping until I got off at 49th Street.

— Anna Moine

Dear Diary:

It was 1979 and I had just moved to New York for a job. I was headed downtown on a not-too-crowded No. 4 train. I was freshly showered in a new suit and polished shoes and feeling good.

I saw a well-dressed young woman across the car looking at me. She smiled.

A few minutes later, when the train stopped at 14th Street, the woman walked up to me and handed me a folded piece of paper before getting off the train.

I waited a moment before looking at what I was sure would be a name and phone number.

The note read simply: “You MUST get a new watch.”

I never wore that black plastic Casio again.

— Richard M. Detwiler Jr.

Dear Diary:

“How’s the egg salad?” I said to the man who had asked to share my tiny table at Murray’s Bagels.

He was obviously enjoying it, while reading a photocopied manuscript. He was the corduroy type: middle-aged, wearing glasses and sporting a bit of beard.

His assessment of the egg salad — “needs pepper” — and his musings on possible variations led to a conversation about what he was reading.

It turned out to be an assignment he had given to a class he was teaching. The class was to meet in a couple of hours and he was reviewing the material beforehand.

I laughed and asked what he thought of the book he had assigned, an analysis of the elements of fiction.

“Here’s one paragraph I particularly like,” he said before reading it aloud. It began with a misguided metaphor and ended with a pompous word jumble.

“That is the worst nonsense,” I said, hoping it would come across as a bit of good-natured provocation.

He took it well, telling me he was a published novelist and had won some acclaim.

I noted his name, finished my coffee and left for an appointment I had nearby.

I Googled him when I got home. He wasn’t lying.

— Ellen Azorin

Dear Diary:

It was a pleasant Saturday morning in October at Fort Tilden, and we were going to need a northwest wind and more sun if we were to have any chance of seeing hawks. But it wasn’t happening. Bad luck for our group of about 30 birders.

No matter. By New York standards, the park was empty. The summer crowds had left the beach to the surf casters, and it was still too early for spur-of-the-moment hikers.

Our guide turned our attention from the vacant sky to the coastal scrub: Autumn olive. Bittersweet shrub. Bayberry.

He pointed to a dense cluster of bright yellow flowers, the seaside goldenrod. Its nectar sustains monarch butterflies as they flutter thousands of miles south to Mexico.

He said that scientists had once tracked an osprey that had left the Northeast to spend the winter in Venezuela, and had then flown back to the exact same nest by March.

As we silently shared this humbling fact, someone in the back of the group spoke up.

“Just in time for St. Patrick’s Day,” the voice said.

— Mark Rivett-Carnac

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