The City Difference

They do things differently here in New York. As a transplant (albeit one with almost a collective decade of experience), I think I can still see when one truly adopts the customs of their new homeland.

My driving has changed. I used to be a considerate and predominantly defensive driver. Today when I left my garage, there was a large oil truck blocking the street. When the driver came round to the back of the truck, I said to him, "How long are you going to be?" "10, 15 minutes," he retorted. "Are you kidding?" I screeched, "I can't get around you?" "Lady," he said without much interest, "I gotta finish this job." Muttering under my breath, I turned the steering wheel, drove up over the curb and onto the sidewalk. He yelled at me, "Just don't hit me!" I didn't. I navigated 1/2 a block of sidewalk and drove around him onto Riverside Drive. I mean, I have to get to work.

During the course of the day, I cut off an 18 wheeler that was slow to navigate a turn. I was doing 70 mph at the time, but come on, I had to change lanes right then. I also honked at a police car in the City because he was lumbering along and made me miss a green light at Fort Washington. I hate missing that light. And during the course of my commute, I muttered the following expressions at several drivers: "Your mother's fat ass, jerk!" and "Fucking useless New Jersey drivers!" and--a first for me--"Suck my dick, bitch!" A banner day.

I'm not cooking for Thanksgiving but I am making some side dishes and desserts to take to the Aunts in Queens. On my drive home I stopped at the uber-Stop 'N Shop in Westchester to purchase ingredients and to simultaneously battle mobs of holiday food shoppers. I navigate my shopping cart like a stealth missile, cutting in front of shoppers and fighting them for boxes of vanilla extract. I'm so impatient for this phase in my day to be completed that I bag my own groceries, pay in cash and dash for the exit.

Once back in Manhattan, I don't have the gentile luxury of pulling into my driveway, unloading the groceries in a calm fashion steps away in the kitchen and calling it a night. There is a dance that is waged when one purchases more groceries than they can actually physically carry. To whit, I drive to the entrance of my apartment building, double park in the middle of the street and put the hazard lights on. I start unloading bags of groceries and store them in the vestibule of the building with my doorman. It takes six trips to achieve this. I then drive the four blocks to my parking garage, leave the car and walk back to my building. The doorman has thoughtfully loaded my groceries onto our bellman cart. I give him $5 and thank him for his kind assistance (although--honestly--I am thinking, "If you had actually helped my unload all these fucking bags from the car, that five spot would have been ten dollars.")I wait for an elevator and when one comes, I have to wait while a gaggle of elderly women meander out. While simultaneously holding the elevator door open with my right foot, I find it takes the strength of Hercules to navigate the unwieldy cart into the elevator. I arrive at my floor, wrangle the cart to my apartment, hold the firesafe steel door open with my right foot while trying to maneuver the cart in, unload the cart and then (Good Christ) maneuver the cart back to the elevator to return it to the lobby. Sometimes it's simply exhausting.

Please don't get me started on the size of my kitchen. Dimension wise, it's one step above an airplane toilet. Apparently in the minority, I am a New Yorker that actually cooks. But cook I must and I start this task not by unloading ingredients and organizing my cooking tools but by playing The Clash very loudly and downing a very large glass of wine.

I think I'm getting this whole City living thing, no?