Submitted by: Voter
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( 3.4 / 150 )I try to walk everyday whatever the weather. Today it was cold and colorless with the promise of more. I had a winter attitude. Colorless too. I passed a playground. It was empty except for a man pushing a girl on a swing. She was at that just-learning-to-talk stage, maybe four. She was stuffed into a bright orange snow suit and tied round and round with the longest scarf I've ever seen. It did nothing to stifle her or her energies. As she swung, she yelled, "I love this! I love this! I love this!" There was no theater in it, nothing coquettish. Language was still too new to her. She kept bellowing it as I passed, until I was out of earshot. "I love this. I love this. I love this." She said it over and over it because it was necessary for her. As bright a thing as that uncomfortable-looking snow suit. She hadn't any notion of adult habits of forgetting life's variety, its simple pleasures, of how easy it is some days to take grim solace in winter limits.
Submitted by: Walking girl
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( 3.1 / 92 )I'd just gotten on the subway, the A train, at Fulton Street in downtown Brooklyn, but then the F pulled in across the platform. That was the better train. I'd been waiting for it and settled for the A so when it rolled in I jumped up to transfer. The doors of the A train were closing, but I thought they'd surely bounce back. Surely other people had the same idea I had. I stuck my arm out and the doors shut on it and kept shutting. No bouncing. The train even jerked forward an inch like it was moving on, with or without my arm. Two men leapt up to pry the doors open. Their response was automatic. When they managed to push the doors back (which they even agreed were unusually determined to hold on to my arm), I got off the train to catch my breath, but I wish I hadn't. I wish I'd stayed on the train to thank them, to get their names, to shake their hands. I want to thank them now and remind everyone who visits this site that humans, even the everyday New York sort, can be kind, even beautiful, heroic.
Submitted by: Subway Sally
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( 3 / 121 )There was this bird on the sidewalk. It was a city sidewalk. Night was coming on and it would have been easy to step on it -- moving as fast as we do here, in the city, I almost did. I stood by it for a time, making sure no one would. The bird was young; it had more fluff than feathers, and it would not move no matter what I did to cause it to. A woman came upon me and saw the bird. We agreed it was in danger (more than one kind, it seems). I asked if she had a napkin or something so I could pick it up and move it (I remembered warnings, trustworthy or not, from all sorts of people about not touching birds; that our oils, our hands are a threat to them). She had a plastic bag full of stuff. She dumped the bag out on the sidewalk and handed it to me so I could use it as a glove. She didn't even hesitate; her stuff just poured out. The bird trembled in my bagged hand but didn't resist. It was unbelievably tiny and fragile. I could have crushed it. I put it in a planter, made sure it had its footing, and then I returned the bag. I wanted to hug that woman, but she was getting her stuff together and probably would have found it odd that I was so grateful. But we saved that bird for a time and she was so willing, understood my need to help so perfectly. Like I said, she didn't hesitate, and that bird was so tiny.
Submitted by: Grace
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