Apparently New York's Best Kept Secret

Today, as I often do, I spent the day in the city. I took the train into the city and took the subway around the city. As I was maneuvering my way about, I was thinking about how courteous New Yorkers actually are. I know our reputation is that we are not nice, but that is really not warranted. Will we get impatient with you if you stop dead in your tracks in the middle of the sidewalk or are unaware that people who want to stand on the escalators should stand to the right (leaving room for walkers on the left)? Yes, absolutely. But that is because you interfered with the flow of traffic, and traffic flowing smoothly is a necessity with literally millions of people walking around.

On the subway today, there was an elderly Asian couple who had just walked on. Seeing the old man was unsteady, an equally aged white woman bolted out of her seat and nodded to his wife to put him in the seat.  At that very moment, the train lurched forward and the old guy reached out to grasp the pole, but his hand never made it. I tightly caught the middle of his arm to prevent him from creating a pile up.  Two other people from the other side got him in his seat. No words were exchanged, no eye contact amongst the train riders. I think the wife said thank you. We do things. We don’t make a big deal about it.

On another subway, an African American young girl dropped her phone on the stairs. I looked at the phone, looked at the quickly moving girl, looked at the phone again.  Wasn’t sure what to do first since picking up the phone meant losing the girl to the arriving train.  A white woman stepped in front of the girl and pointed “you dropped your phone! You dropped your phone!” A few other people just stood still so as to make way for her to get it on the stairs before somebody else wiped out. I heard another person just keep saying “oh no, oh no” like how could you live without your phone. It cracked me up. Maybe 15 seconds and done. Everybody moved on.

On the train home today, an older white guy got up from his seat and left his manbag.  He was two steps from getting off the train and I shouted “Sir, I think you left your bag!” He responded “oh, it’s always attached to me so I didn’t even think about it.” Tick tock, tick tock.  It was quickly becoming obvious to me that he was not going to walk fast enough to retrieve his bag and make his train stop. But then suddenly, a Hispanic teenager who was in the aisle stuffing her face with popcorn, immediately said “I’ll get it!” and moved faster than any of the rest of us could. Simple. Done. No big deal.

New Yorkers may not feel the need to make eye contact with the hundreds of people they walk past each day, nor greet them. Nonetheless, they are aware of what is going on around them and they jump in when needed. That’s both nice and more sincere and I will take that any time over a sugary “how are y’all doing today?”

Thanks for reading!

Eve