Kindness in the Big Apple

Earlier this month I spent three days in New York City. Back in 1973, when I finished United’s flight attendant school in Chicago, I was almost assigned Newark, New Jersey as my home base. I was happy to get D.C. because I had been to NYC in the early 70’s and I found it rushed and unfriendly. I know now it was me, not the people.

This visit I went into a shop to buy a loaf of gluten free bread to take home. The young Hispanic man asked if I wanted a plastic bag. The bread was wrapped in plastic so I felt confused, like I couldn’t hear him.

“Maybe it’s my age, but I tend to drift off sometimes and I don’t hear,” I told him.

“I can’t ever hear my mom, so I don’t think it’s your age. She calls me and I actually don’t hear her. I don’t know what it is,” he said.

I decided to use my intuitive skills. “Maybe you were meant to have another name, and you would respond to that one. Something like Jim Bob. That would get your attention.”

We had a laugh and off I went, only to return for lunch. As he handed me my take-out, he leaned forward and smiled. “Have an amazing life,” he told me.

Oh how wrong I was about New Yorkers. From the helpful girls on the subway, to the tourist family by Rockefeller Center, to the older man who told me the city was covered with elm trees until the blight, to the maintenance man who leaned on his broom and laughed when I told him I’d been walking in circles. Their friendliness enveloped me like a warm coat. And with 40 mph winds and temps in the low 30’s, I needed it.