A New York Story

This may be a bit on the rambling side, but look, it's been a week. 

Last weekend, I traveled to New York for the annual family gathering in celebration of my nephew's birthday. He just turned 12. It was a very short trip, but in the grand scheme of things, I suppose there was some significance to being there so close to the 25th anniversary of 9/11.

But that's not what this post is about. No, this is about a particular incident that occurred during a subway ride to Coney Island to attend a baseball game between the home Cyclones team and some other team I can't remember.

During this (very long) ride, my dad kept cracking wise about a young lady sitting nearby who was fastidiously adjusting her makeup with her camera phone as a mirror. 

My mom, as she's always doing, was scrolling through god knows what on her own phone. At some point, this young lady looked up and muttered something like, "Bitch, what are you doing?"

A few moments passed, and then she got up and walked over to my mom and demanded: "Excuse me, why you taking pictures of me?"

My befuddled mom responded, "I wasn't. I'm just looking through my phone."

My dad jumped in and proclaimed, "She wasn't taking pictures of you, it was me."

I don't know what he meant by that, but this young lady persisted, "Bitch, I saw you holding your phone up taking pictures of me."

My dad tried to interject again, and the young lady cut him off, saying, "You don't need to speak for her, I'm asking her."

"Well I'm her husband," he retorted, "and you're wrong."

"I don't care if you're her husband, I'm talking to her," she shot back. 

I'm about as uncomfortable as a person can be at this point.

There were a couple more back-and-forths, and finally the lady huffed back to her seat.

But then my dad decided to look back at her and snarl, "Did you get it right?" (Referring to her makeup  perfectionism.)

I had had enough. "Stop," I spat at him. This is a man, for better or worse, who doesn't know how to cut his losses.

Anyway, after we shortly thereafter got off the train, my sister pulled my mom close and told her, "Don't argue with crazy. You will never win with crazy."

There's your lesson for the day, folks.

The Cyclones lost, by the way.

(Image by Sue Park from Pixabay)