mulberryshoots

This morning, I was going through some newspaper and magazine clippings as part of my big clean-out to make room for reorganizing my library of overflowing books. It’s always interesting to look at what I had saved, especially the “Dear Diary” clippings that appear regularly in NYT Monday newspapers. One of them, published in August, 2011, made us laugh out loud as I read it before we sat down to have lunch.

Two boxes of books are already staged downstairs to donate to the library on Wednesday and I’m hoping to double that. As some of you know, I enjoy reading the New York Times because it stimulates and inspires me to do things I wouldn’t otherwise know about. One example is the “Kiku” Japanese Chrysanthemum Show at the New York Botanical Garden that I plan to drive down to see next week before it closes. Another is an interview with Mary Louise Parker, one of my favorite actresses, who is featured in the Broadway Play, “Snow Geese” which I might go to see by taking a Greyhound Bus down to NYC for a Wednesday Matinee sometime in early November. Taking the early morning bus, I would arrive in NYC around 12:30, catch a quick lunch and go to the 2:00 p.m. show, then take the 6:30 p.m. bus back home.

New York City has always been somewhere I liked to visit ever since I lived there in rent-controlled apartments for five years when I was first married. Subway rides were cheap at 15 cents, you could go and listen to Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic in Sheeps’ Meadow for free and we got to see all of George Balanchine’s ballets with Jacques d’Amboise and Suzanne Farrell at Lincoln Center, paying $1.50 for fifth ring seats. Dinners in Chinatown included heaping mounds of steaming snails in black bean sauce, white rice and a platter of chinese greens that cost less than $4.00 for four people. Those were great days to be in NYC!

A few years ago, my daughters and I went there to celebrate my birthday, saw the Rockettes in Radio Music City Hall, walked around the Christmas Tree at Rockefeller Center and also visited the gaping hole that was the site of the 9-11 attack. Sobering. We also went to a flea market at West 23rd Street where I found a little gilt ram for a few dollars that symbolized my birth sign, Capricorn.

As I happened upon this little clipping, I thought it might brighten your day with a little humor, as it did mine, while I slog through all this stuff that’s due outside for pickup tomorrow morning.

“Dear Diary” (August, 2011)

   While I was sitting on the subway in mid-June, a man in his 30’s who was pushing a stroller with a baby in it and who had another baby strapped to his chest, sat down opposite me. 

   The woman next to me asked, “Are they twins?” He said that they were and that they were 7 months old. 

   The same woman next to me said, “Oh, I have twins, two boys, age 13.”   

   The woman next to her exclaimed, “Oh, I have twins, two boys, age 11”

   The man standing up in the doorway said, “Oh, I am a twin and I have twins, a boy and a girl.”

   At that point, I weighed in, “Oh, I have 38-year-old twin boys.”

   At that moment, a woman sitting nearby jumped up and yelled, “I am out of here!” And she stomped down the train car.

   Everyone in the subway car broke out in laughter.

          ~ Mark Edelman