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Aug 5 03: NY moment #25,318
So I was on the R train headed downtown earlier this afternoon. I was very near the end of Wodehouse’s Something Fresh, which I have enjoyed very much, and which is why my sentences all keep running to lengths like this these days; and the plot was all resolving itself neatly, if rather abruptly, and with the continued good humor that has made Wodehouse such a pleasure to finally explore. Looking up from the book for a moment, I saw a young Latina girl of seven or eight swinging idly around one of the steel poles intended to steady wobbly commuters. She wore a blue denim skirt and had long curly brown hair and liquid brown eyes that looked out upon the train with that self-possessed air that only seven- or eight-year-old girls can really pull off without seeming rude. Round and round the pole she went; eventually I made out what was on her navy blue t-shirt. It was a traffic sign, an inverted equilateral triangle with a red border. In prim, curly letters it said
Yield
to the
Princess
And it was just such a sublime moment that I laughed my ass off right there on the subway.
No, actually, that’s not quite how it happened: I wanted to laugh my ass off. I got as far as the first bark thereof, and was immediately speared with a steel-edged look of disdain by the tattooed grungette next to me, who, although she was closer to the Princess than I was, clearly did not appreciate the zen perfection of the moment in which she found herself. She was probably a rock journalist, or perhaps a freelance costumers’ assistant for cable television shows. Something like that. Out of respect for her existential angst, I kept my laughter to myself, smiling into the pages of my book and not reading them at all. The Princess spun on. The next stop was mine, and I disembarked; for all I know, she is spinning still.
Commentary
A nice moment. You should have laughed away; scouring girl be damned! One of the primary indulgences of living in NYC is that you needn’t give a hoot about what anyone else is thinking — chances are you’ll never encounter them again.
posted by Pablo Feyipes, Aug 7 03 3:33 PM