Tortoiseshell Comb
Dear Diary:
I was on a bus going up Madison Avenue on a very slow weekday afternoon. We were averaging about a block per red light, and I had nothing to do but study the other passengers.
One thing that caught my eye was the back of the head of a woman sitting several seats in front of me. She had an elaborate upswept hairdo with a fancy tortoiseshell comb holding it in place.
I eventually summoned the nerve to approach her. I told her how pretty her comb was and asked where I could buy one.
Turning around, she said in a thick accent that she had gotten it in Argentina. After apologizing for bothering her, I returned to my seat.
A half-hour later, she passed me on her way to the exit door at the back of the bus.
Reaching up to her head, she whipped out the comb, and her long, auburn locks flowed down to her shoulders.
She dropped the comb in my lap, wished me a happy day and disappeared from my sight forever.
— Jill Newman Iversen
Postal Service
Dear Diary:
After days of going back and forth with the Postal Service about the whereabouts of a package I was expecting from my mother, I went to the post office at the corner of 11th Street and Fourth Avenue just after it opened at 9 a.m.
As I waited empty-handed in line behind several people who were holding packages, a middle-aged woman in a postal uniform approached me.
“Baby, are you picking up a package?” she asked.
I nodded.
She motioned me with her finger out of the line, and we walked toward the back of the post office.
“Package pickup isn’t usually until 10 a.m.,” she said, looking at my confirmation slip. “But let me see what I can do for you.”
She walked off and then reappeared two minutes later with a large brown box.
“Here you go, baby,” she said, handing me the package. “You have a good day now.”
I thanked her and turned to leave. As I did, I heard her speaking to another person in line: “Baby, you picking up a package?”
— Oona Pritchard
Sour Patch
Dear Diary:
It was around Halloween, and I was walking up Sixth Avenue, happily munching on some Sour Patch Kids Watermelon candies from a bag I had just bought.
As I paused for the light at West Eighth Street, a large hand entered my field of vision.
I turned my head.
The hand was attached to an older gentleman. He was lounging against a store smoking a cigarette. The corner, it appeared, belonged to him, and so did the sunshine. It made sense that the candies would too.
His palm remained in front of me, expectant. I poured some candies into his hand. His eyes crinkled.
“Good choice,” he said. “The watermelons are way better than the kids.”
I grinned back at him, and the light changed.
“Don’t miss it,” he said, and nodded me on my way.
— Beah Jacobson
Across the Courtyard
Dear Diary:
In 1976, I moved into a place on West 12th Street and began a graduate program at the New School.
Because I was coming from suburban Boston and college in western Massachusetts, the move to New York City was terrifying and exciting. My parents were horrified.
After I moved in, I and a somewhat older man with a mustache began a flirtation from our windows across the building’s courtyard from each other.
Eventually, we met for coffee, and he took me for rides through the city on his motorcycle. He was mysterious, charming and fun. I was smitten.
Then one day I glimpsed a woman in his window, then later on the back of his bike. That was the end of that.
I never got back the frying pan I lent him. And I bought some curtains.
— Denise Miller
Getting a Grip
Dear Diary:
I was standing in a crowded subway car at rush hour. It was a speedy express that jostled those of us who were standing, forcing us to grab onto whatever post or overhead bar we could grab.
I am over six feet tall, so it was easy enough for me to reach the bar above me with my left arm. A woman who was significantly shorter and standing next to me had nothing to hold onto and kept losing her balance.
“If you’d like, you can hold onto my arm,” I said.
Without a word she gripped my right arm at the elbow.
“Don’t tell my wife,” I said, trying to put her at ease.
“Don’t tell my husband,” she said.
We rode in comfortable silence for the next several minutes, got off at the same stop and never said another word to each other.
— Leonard Orr
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