As I walk to and from work each day, I tend to file away the minutia I overhear and see for future documentation in the form of this blog and stories to tell my friends. Three recent observations, totally unrelated, have been hanging in my head for the past week or so.

First, walking through Harlem to the hospital one morning at about 7:00 a.m., I was walking past a woman walking toward me. She was dressed unremarkably, in fact, the only thing that stood out was that she was talking on her cell phone. As she neared me, I overheard this small bit of her conversation, ” Okay, but if you want tongue-kissing, that’s going to cost extra…” My head swerved around in the classic double-take. Did I really just hear that? Did it mean what I think it meant? Was she booking her schedule for the week? Seven in the morning seemed like a pretty early start.

Second, passing a school bus that was parked on the street nearby my apartment. There was a sign posted on the door that read, “This bus has been checked for sleeping children.” While I cannot deny this is a good policy for drivers to follow, I don’t think I’ve ever seen something like this. Is this a new school bus policy or just another random thing of New York?

Finally, the other evening as I walked home, I passed a man smoking a hookah. “Exotic,” you might say, perhaps even eccentric. What was unique was that this man was walking and smoking a water pipe. In fact I could only see the tube that he was smoking from as I approached. As we passed, I glanced back and saw that he had fashioned a hookah backpack. Given that smoking a bowl of tobacco involves flame/burning tar, I am at a complete loss as to the wisdom of smoking a hookah that is being held on your back by a nylon (i.e. meltable) backpack.

Ahh, New York.

As ever,
K. Quinn