I don’t know if it’s just me, but New Yorkers seem nicer than people back home. They smile more, they’re funnier, and… dare I say this? They’re more polite.
Or maybe it’s just me.
But I don’t think so. I have a theory. And since I share a birthday with Albert Einstein, my theories should be taken very, very seriously.
I have concluded that N=PF2.
That is to say, the number of People (P) times the amount of square Feet (F2) of available space equals a naturally occurring sum of Nice (N). Or, Nice equals People times Square Feet.
So the more people there are who must share a finite amount of space in the City, the nicer you kinda have to be to each other. It’s, like, a survival thing, I guess. Or maybe it’s tribal. Or species-al. (really? spell-check doesn’t have a problem with that word? weird.)
It’s my theory, and I’m stickin’ to it.
Because back home in the western states, everything is spread out. The buildings, the mountains, the towns, and the people – all spread out. So you don’t really have to be very nice, or even say hello to someone for an entire day if you don’t want to. You could go to the grocery store, grunt back at the girl beeping all your food past the register, get gas at the station by swiping your card and never even looking at a gas station attendant (do they even still have those?), go shopping at the mall, eat a burrito grande in the park, and make it home in time to catch up on Bret Michael’s Rock of Love without brushing someone’s arm or even making eye contact.
Not so much out here. If you drive, good luck not being honked at, waved at, or having some kind of expletive (in varying languages) spat in your general direction – all in good fun, of course, because that is how New Yorkers acknowledge each other and say to one another that “You are, most definitely, NOT invisible to me.” You exist! You’re not a number – dammit you’re a man. And you’re in everybody’s way and everybody is in your way and isn’t it great that we can all muck about and be in each other's ways these days?
You see, I consider being recognized, even with passing anonymous disdain, a much friendlier gesture than being ignored entirely. And that’s what they do out west – they ignore each other. Booooring!
I can prove my theory. Remember those cheeky Westerns where the bad guy always says to the good guy, “This town ain’t big ‘nuff fer the two of us, pard’ner…”? Well, there’s your historical account of how people acted towards each other back in the wild west days. I think the people who initially moved out there did it to get away from everyone – and it took one hell of a long journey in covered wagon to accomplish this. And now, thanks to genetic memory, those of us who’ve descended from those lone cowboys still feel a pang of violence toward that one other guy who seems to be taking up our space in our town. Now that gun fights at high noon are (mostly) illegal, I think we’ve all just learned to ignore each other so as not to be startin’ somethin’ (sorry – I think that’s more Michael Jackson than cowboy talk). Maybe that’s where the lack of eye contact comes in as well… they say not to make eye contact with someone if you don’t want to start a fight…
Again – I digress. I digress a lot these days. Blogs are good for that.
Case in point: I was in Sedona a week before we left for NYC, and my watch got snagged on something and fell off somewhere around the Tlaquepaque shops. I noticed it almost instantly, since Gary knew he’d seen it on my wrist in the very last shop we came out of, so we retraced our steps multiple times, asking every shop owner along the path if someone might have turned it in, and stayed around long enough for someone to come clean and give back the watch. No one did. My watch was probably snapped up within a minute after it hit the ground. Someone obviously picked it up and kept it, not bothering to wonder or even care if its return might be greatly appreciated. It wasn’t even a very expensive watch, either. I mean, geez.
A week later at the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown Manhattan, Gary and I were in the business center of the hotel where guests can use the computers to check in to their flight and print out their boarding pass, etc. I was helping Gary do this for his return flight home, and I was a little bit flustered at the time and trying to hide how upset I really was that he wasn’t going to be able to stay with me.
We got back to our room, and as I sat down on the bed, silently pouting at his boarding pass, the phone rang. Gary answered, looked at me incredulously (I’ve always wanted to use that word), and said “Thank you! Thank you very much!” and hung up. He told me that the front desk had called to inform us that my purse had been turned in by somebody by the name of AWESOME and that they were holding it for me to come pick it up. I didn't even realize I was missing it until we got the call. I'd inadvertently left it – credit cards, cash, driver’s license, passport, and all – on the floor next to the computer. Everything was still there, down to the last penny. Could have been a New Yorker who turned it in, could have been someone from out of town; didn’t matter. It was in the City, and because N=PF2, the person who found it was the product of the sum of Nice.
The other day at the Museum of the City of New York, I got so starry-eyed at the Joel Grey display that I somehow left my camera on the display case and walked off (yeah, go ahead, raise your eyebrows at me – it is strange how often I seem to lose things these days). Once I realized I’d left it there, I went back to retrieve it and it was gone – and just as I was about to give up asking the staff if someone had turned it in, my friend Laura called after me and said “Margo! He has your camera!” I whirled around (picture this in slow motion with violin music in the bg) to see a smiling older man – a very Nice man – holding my camera all safe and sound and warm in his pudgy little fingers. I thanked him profusely and my day was resurrected.
Not only are the people just plain friendlier, but weird and magical things tend to happen here. I was just telling Gary before last weekend how I’d suddenly realized, during a particularly humid walk home from Central Park, that I really would be needing an umbrella here, and felt stupid for not packing the little travel-sized one that I keep at home. So I promised him that within the next few days while Laura was in town, if we found ourselves at a shop where they sold umbrellas, I’d buy myself one. So the night Laura came out, we decided to walk along the Museum Mile, where you can gaze up at the Met Museum's eerily shadowed night lighting, when hardly anyone's around, and you can jump and play on the vast concrete steps that lead up to the remarkably mammoth Greco-Roman columns that signify the Museum’s grand entrance. As I skipped down the far side of the steps, my eye caught something in the light. Looking down, a single object lay parallel with the steps:
Come on, admit it. Say it with me: That was kind of spooky. Should I have turned it in? Well, OK yeah, maybe. But you see, when I opened the umbrella, I realized that it was dirty, slightly damaged and broken on one side, and kind of old - but usable. The museum was closed, it was very late, and there was nobody around, so I took it home. Maybe I should have turned it in the next day or something. Crap. Now I feel bad about it... Maybe I haven't been here long enough yet to factor completely in to the realm of Nice. I'm sorry - it must be genetic. I'm working on it. Irony in hindsight can be very unsettling... So not only do random New Yorkers seem to watch over my property for me, they also ask me things in the elevator. “Going running in the park today?” “Do you like this weather we’re having?” “Where did you find those crazy shoes?” You can’t avoid a conversation with a New Yorker, because they ask you things. Back home, you might hear someone say, “This dry heat sucks,” but you don’t necessarily have to respond. You could easily just vaguely nod and still avoid eye contact if you wanted to. Heck, they’ll even point out the most popular table to sit at in Effy’s Café, remind you in the shoe store not to leave your purse behind while you do the idiot walk of testing a potential new pair, and they’ll even stop you in the subway and say, “The 6 train’s not running today, you’ll have to go all the way to the Brooklyn Bridge and transfer back up on the 4…” – even if they have no idea where you’re actually headed. It doesn’t matter where you’re headed. You’re there, you exist, the subways are jammed with people (remember, P x F2), so Nice will be in plentiful bounty all around you. Another friend of mine who grew up here pointed out that before 9/11, people weren’t quite so nice as they are now – so there are plenty of other factors that can weigh in on the sum of Nice. But it’s been 10 years since that horrific day, and I’d say that Nice in New York is here to stay. And maybe – just maybe, so am I. (...and now I feel really, really bad about not turning in that umbrella.) |
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