METROPOLITAN DIARY
‘Where Ya From?’
Dear Diary:
It was 1988. I had just left my husband after three years of marriage, moved out of our Woodside apartment and taken the first place I could find that I could afford. It was in Bensonhurst.
Young and newly single, I was excited to decorate the apartment with shelves and other homey touches, and a trip to the neighborhood lumberyard proved fruitful.
A nice young man helped me find wood and hardware for the shelves and then continued to walk with me as I scanned the aisles for anything else I might need.
“So, uh, where ya from, anyway?” he asked.
I paused for a second, trying to decide if he was asking about ethnicity or geography. I decided he meant the latter.
“I just moved here from Queens,” I said.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” he said in the most Brooklyn voice I’d ever heard. “Ya got an accent.”
— Amy Hall
Cutting Greens
Dear Diary:
I placed my bag of vegetables on the bench at a bus stop on Broadway, across from the farmers’ market, and said hello to a woman who was sitting there.
She took a plastic bag out of her cart and a pair of scissors out of her purse and began to cut some greens she had in a large baggie.
“It saves me time,” she said.
The bus pulled up, and I walked to the curb. The woman was still cutting.
“Coming?” I called.
“No,” she said, smiling. “I’m walking home.”
— Jane Seskin
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/23/nyregion/metropolitan-diary.html
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