‘I saw her carefully descending the stairs to the station’
On the way to Kanaalstraat
Dear Diary:
It was a spring day and I was walking to the train station on my way to run errands during my lunch break when I saw an older woman with a cane waving and smiling at me.
She asked me where the Q train was.
“Right behind you,” I said. “Where are you going?”
“Canal Street,” she replied.
She told me she got lost and couldn’t remember how she ended up in my Brooklyn neighborhood.
I watched her carefully descend the stairs to the station. She did it backwards. She said it was easier on her hips.
I was worried about her, so I offered to drive with her to Canal Street. She agreed.
During our ride, she told me her life story: how she grew up in Beijing in the 1940s, how her son died of leukemia, and how she moved to New York alone to study music.
When we arrived at Canal Street, I insisted on giving her my number.
I haven’t seen her in my neighborhood since, but we occasionally have breakfast at a Chinese bakery near Canal Street. It’s her favorite spot.
– Cathy Zhang
‘Don’t think about it too much’
Dear Diary:
I was walking my dog down the street in Carroll Gardens on Sunday. As I reached the corner, a man with a large brown duffel bag walked hurriedly toward me.
“I am really sorry!” he shouted as he stopped at the corner.
My dog and I were both looking at him, but he was looking up.
“Throw them to me,” he shouted. “Don’t think about it too much.”
I followed his gaze to the corner apartment on the top floor of the building we were standing in front of. There was a woman standing by the window with a red sneaker in her hand.
“I just want to wait for…” she said, her voice trailing off. She gestured to me.
I smiled and waved at her, then continued walking around the corner. When we got a little further, I paused and turned around.
I looked at my dog. My dog looked at me. We both looked at the apartment as a red sneaker floated through the air.
I couldn’t see the man anymore, but I could see that he had taken the sneaker.
“Great,” he shouted. “Now the other one!”
A second sneaker flew through the air.
“Good job!” He said before walking in the other direction.
– Kat Lynn
Full hands
Dear Diary:
I was on the F train into town when a young man with a large pizza and a small dog got on at 34th Street and sat next to me.
“Excuse me,” he said. “Where are you getting off?”
Roosevelt Island, I said.
“Do you mind holding my pizza until then?” he asked.
I must have looked at him funny.
“I have a new girlfriend,” he said, “and I wanted to impress her, so my dog and I took the train to New Haven this morning so I could buy her a real Frank Pepe pizza.”
“I’ve been wearing it for hours,” he continued, “and my dog needs my attention.”
He handed me the pizza and sat the dog on his lap.
“What does it say?” I have asked.
“Sausage and mushrooms,” he said. “Her favorite.”
“Mine too,” I said.
– Elisabeth Rosenberg
‘Gigantor’
Dear Diary:
I jumped into a cab on Park Avenue South on a dreary, gray Thursday in the 1930s. The driver was friendly and we started talking about the lack of snow in New York City.
Somehow the conversation ended up in an old episode of ‘Twilight Zone’. Realizing that we were the same age, the taxi driver asked if I knew who Gigantor was.
Did I know who Gigantor was?
“Gigantor, Gigantor, Gigaaaantooor, Gigantor, the space age robot,” I sang. “He’s at your command.”
As we walked up Park Avenue, we broke into another: “Come and listen to the story about a man named Jed, a poor mountain climber who could barely feed his family…”
We turned left onto 57th Street and shifted gears again.
“Meet George Jetson,” we sang, “his son Elroy, daughter Judy, Jane, his wife.”
As we circled Columbus Circle, we turned to the 1970s and Jim Croce’s “Time in a Bottle.”
The trip ended far too quickly. I thanked the driver for a nice ride and got out of the taxi.
I’m sorry I didn’t ask his name. But if he’s there reading, I have one more:
‘Take our advice. A gorilla like Magilla is very nice at any price. Magilla Gorilla for sale!”
– Marjorie Silverman
Tangled up
Dear Diary:
I was walking along Zabar on a sunny spring day when I became tangled in a small dog’s leash.
The owner apologized profusely, although she had nothing to worry about. It only took a moment for me to free myself.
“What happened to the Upper West Side?” the woman said as she made small talk. “I haven’t been here in years. It’s so different from how I remember it.”
“Oh,” I said, “where are you from?”
“The Upper East Side,” she said.
– Peggy Lam
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Illustrations by Agnes Lee