Breakfast At Tiffany's

This morning I am standing on the downtown platform as a Real New York Commuter waiting for the C train to take me to my Temporary Employee Assignment when two sweet looking, 20-ish, French Boys with luggage ask me how to get some place they are pointing to on a map.   They had just gotten off the “boos”. 

Thing is, I ask for directions a lot, only I usually ask someone who I have to jump in front of, rip my shirt off and scream, “SURPRISE!” to get them to glance ahead.  Real New York Commuters know exactly how many minutes it takes to get across a street and they spare no other minutes for silly things like eye-level vision.  Real New York Commuters know the pulse of foot traffic in this city and while we speak in robot as I jog along side them, I usually get the correct directions. 

“I don’t know.  I just moved here.”

That is my regular phrase.  But only after a good 30 seconds of real attempts.  Not attempts at direction.  I know this city too, but it is the exchange I feel compelled to be responsible for.  It usually starts with, “OK…let’s see…you want to go to…now how much time do you have?...have you been here before?...MoMa?....hmm…you may want to go by the park or maybe you should take a cab…it looks like rain…do you know where you can get the best umbrellas?!....”  I don’t mean to wander around in my brain like this in front of people.  I think I just enjoy that someone wants information I have.  I think I feel important for a second.  Like an ambassador for the City, State, Country….Planet.  This tends to weird some people out and I sense it so I gracefully let them move on to the topless tactic with a Real New York Commuter.

Zee Boyeez were visiting for three days and told me all of the places they wanted to visit and the order they were going to do so.  Times Square, Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building, Staten Island Ferry, Central Park and MTV.  And they were staying somewhere on the upper West Side.  Ahhhhhhh….my people….  The lost Parisians smiled such grateful smiles and listened to my quick stories of my three-day visit to Paris on my recent honeymoon.  We chatted until their stop and I told them to ask someone to point out where they could get the, “UPTOWN ONE/NINE…no, 1…or 2….the RED line…ROUGE….”   We all laughed.