Meeting Strangers

I must be completely, irrationally, and embarrassingly honest. One of my most favorite things in the world is meeting strangers. By all means, take the window seat or plop down next to me on the subway, and interrupt my dinner if you think I resemble Scarlett Johansson or stepmom you haven’t seen in 20 years, because I would really like to meet you. I could people watch for hours on end…and I actually have. Because as much as I savor solitude like the last bite of a hunk of NY cheesecake, I just love people. I want to know their stories, where they came from, and why they are where they are now.

When the parents told me I could go into the city one day prior to the family, stay in their friends’ swanky SoHo apartment, and greet them the next day at noon, I could barely contain my excitement. Ever since I was a little girl, exploring the Big Apple (does anyone still call it that?) had been my dream.

The idea of sashaying down the street in NYC had me starry-eyed, but I figured with my lack of any sense of direction and knowledge of the subway system, I had better have a guide. So, my aunt and uncle who reside in Princeton, New Jersey, hopped on the train to meet me for a day in the city! When I arrived with my (you guessed it) iced soymilk chai latte in hand they were sitting on the steps.

Our first destination was the World Trade Center memorial and museum….something that had me watery-eyed and melancholy. The memorial is truly something to behold.

We had lunch on the waterfront overlooking New Jersey across the way and grand yachts and shiny catamarans on the surprisingly pretty water. I devoured a huge hunk of spinach and gruyere quiche (forgetting the slice of greasy NY magherita pizza I had as a mid-morning snack), and we even spotted a man giving his autograph to a patron.

Having lived in the South my entire life, I was a little flabberghasted when I was walking down the street and a random older woman pushed my shoulder as she walked by! I stood there for a moment, wide-eyed and bewildered and thought, This would never happen in the South. It wouldn’t and that is a blanket statement that I am fully qualified to make. I was also stunned when someone just yelled, “Sexy!” at me and the number of cat calls I received when stuffing my face with gelato on a Tuesday night.

When touring the city with my aunt and uncle, I was ever so grateful because the subway system proves to be significantly more convoluted than that of London’s tube network. There are few words to describe the New York subway. Some may say dirty or gross, but I say it's the most wonderful thing in the world. You get to see all these different kinds of people going to different places or the same places and you get a brief period of time to just wonder why!