It cost me a dear relationship. Recently it provoked a blur of neck swiveling as a coworker’s head whipped around to look at me in amazement. What was it? My “New York”
You, out there in the fancy kitchen, you chuckle. But you’re just like me. Thought it was castoff years ago, didn’t you? But no, if we got together over “caffee” the rhythms of speech, the feeling out as to which neighborhood we came from, that would all return. Going out to dinner, the body language as we walked through a crowd, stood on a train platform waiting, or a thousand other things would all be “tells.”
But it’s not some modular thing that we can add or subtract at will. In telling moments, like altercations on the street, it floods back. Whoa, altercations? I mean confrontations. Get into someone’s face in a big way – “whadda ya mean that’s your F’in cab!” toe to toe smashups.
So it doesn’t matter if you are not from Washington Heights ( we can’t all be, after all); you might be from Brooklyn, Lower East Side, or the Bronx.
You thought it all nicely tucked away in a box. But you know you can take the kid out of New York, but you can’t take the New York out of the kid.
Well done! Great use of the prompts. But about costing you a relationshp? Inquiring minds want to know a tad more.
True. I was caught in a moment of pure street argot with a lowlife. she decided that I was not going to make it with mommy and daddy. She was correct.
So in a sense you were saved by your New York state of mind.
Having only seen New York on TV it looks like a heck of a fast-paced place. You must be strong to live there!