Wit and Wisdom of New Yorkers, Part VI

Overheard in New York City, New York, had I been residing there today:

---"My daughter made the mistake of marrying a taxi driver here in Manhattan. Now whenever they are making love in the privacy of their bedroom, her husband repeatedly interrupts everything to announce that she owes him $15 for each additional minute of the ride he's giving her."

---"The walls between my apartment and my next-door neighbor's unit are so paper-thin that every time he goes to the bathroom, I'm praying from inside my living room that he won't sit on his toilet. If he sits on his toilet, I hear every grunt that he generates. I've had mornings when his grunts from the toilet were so loud that I was awakened from my bedroom in the middle of my sleep there. I thought of knocking on my neighbor's door and urging him to put more fiber in his diet ASAP. But then I decided it would not be wise to irk my neighbor. If my apartment ever turns into a crime scene, I'll need all the witnesses I can get. So I hold my tongue in the hope that someday down the road, he'll be willing to testify about what he saw or heard in regard to the crime I was victimized by inside my bolt-locked apartment."

---"I'm very typical of most New Yorkers. I'm always scheming to become a personal friend with one police officer, one private detective, one attorney, one market analyst, and one medical doctor who each invite questions from me on a 24-hour-a-day basis."

----"My boyfriend has such a dirty and suspicious mind that when I asked him to call a Yellow cab for me here in Manhattan, he angrily informed me that my uttering the word 'yellow' comprised a Freudian slip that revealed my craving for other men's semen, according to Al. So then Al has the audacity to add that if I'm happy with my sex life with Al, I should be asking for a regular cab instead."

--"My boyfriend is such a sexual maniac that he insists on wearing a condom inside his underwear throughout each of our dates here in New York. Peter says he never knows when he might need a condom during a date with me, so he likes to be fully prepared for that spontaneous moment. I told Peter that he is turning into a Condom Nerd, and I find it disgusting. Peter replied that I'm not being fair to him, after all there's no risk he'll ever get me pregnant, particularly since he wears a double-condom in case one of them breaks, Peter says. He then adds that getting an abortion can be a very traumatic experience, and I should be thanking Peter for never putting me in the position where I might have to get an abortion."

---"To me, provincialism is not knowing the height of the tallest building in Buffalo. Any New Yorker who is fond of skyscrapers should make a point of learning the exact height of the tallest buildings in Buffalo. I think you haven't developed a truly sophisticated understanding of the entire world until you acknowledge the possibility that there are tall buildings upstate, too."

---"To me, David Letterman is always at his most obscene when he talks about having attended Ball State University. It's as if his entire life were a perverted version of 'Hamlet', in which David Letterman is always declaring to the entire world: 'To ball or not to ball, that is the question!'"

---"As a parent with two young children, what I need is a guidebook to New York City that's exclusively focused on cultural offerings for New Yorkers age 5 or younger. I need to find out which museums here are the best ones to take my four-year-old son to. I also need to find out which restaurants here are the best for diners who are age 5 or younger. For instance, which restaurants provide the best bibs, at no extra charge, for diners age 5 or younger."

--"I would define snobbishness in New York City as refusing to socialize with writers who haven't had their first book published. To me, there should always be a place in your heart for the pre-published crowd, provided that they are law-abiding, polite, and don't smoke marijuana."

---"What we need in this city is a Manhattan Party Hosts Association that develops a good code of honor for party hosts here. For instance, never let anyone into your party, even if he was an invited guest, if you have any reason to suspect that he brought any illicit drug with him to the party site. A good party host should have the courage to turn away anyone who might compromise the moral integrity of the party."

---"I recently learned that my cousin is a pothead, so I asked him how long he thinks he can get away with it before NYPD does an Internal Affairs investigation on him. My cousin is a police officer here, and I told him he should know better than to light up a joint during his leisuretime. His reply is that he's making the transition into marijuana brownies, since he's fairly sure that none of his colleagues at NYPD would ever learn about it if he ingested all of his marijuana in brownie form. So I told Jim that he's very naive, NYPD could easily arrest a marijuana-brownie baker tomorrow morning and that baker will quickly hand over his entire list of pothead clients in exchange for a reduced prison time pledge from the DA. At that point, Jim's chances of staying in the free world are slim to none. Jim could spend the rest of his life at Attica, and that definitely is NOT a fun place to be!"

----"All my friends say I spend too much time at parties here staring at everyone's nostrils. My friends say it looks neurotic for me to stare at the other guests' nostrils during a party. My reply is that I'm trying to find out ASAP which of the other party guests don't snort cocaine. The ones who don't snort cocaine have nostrils that look healthier and more natural. And if a party guest passes the nostril test, I make a point of introducing myself to that gentleman or lady. I take pride in being one very rare New Yorker who can truthfully say that NONE of my friends ever snort cocaine. I've achieved that success here with help from this invaluable screening device. It's not that I'm snubbing the snorters. It's just that I refuse to socialize with the cocaine addicts until they seek treatment for their addiction and are then certified as having gone 12 straight months without any cocaine consumption."

---"Have you ever noticed that New York is the type of city where the people you haven't met yet are always a lot more interesting to you than the people you have actually spoken with in person?"

--"I've heard of a coffee klache, but your decision to join a cocaine klache here in New York strikes me as perverse to the point of appalling. What makes you think that someone snorting cocaine in your presence will make a good conversation partner for you, much less a good moral influence on you?"

---"Why is it that all of the most photogenic New Yorkers are the very ones I never meet in person? Is there some conspiracy by non-photogenic New Yorkers to deprive me of the opportunity to socialize with New Yorkers who are actually attractive?"

---"To be a responsible party host these days in New York, you probably need to hire an off-duty NYPD officer to administer a breath test to each prospective party guest at the front door of the party site. Anyone who flunks the breath test gets denied entrance into the party. I'm also planning to ask the off-duty NYPD officer I hire to frisk each invited guest at the front door, in order to determine that they have no illicit drugs on them before they're allowed to attend the party."

---"I'm probably a rarity among Italian-Americans here, since I haven't decided yet which brand of imported olive oil is my personal favorite as a dipping sauce for bread or nuts. I wish I could attend an olive-oil sampling party here in Manhattan where I'd get a chance to compare 15 different brands before I decide which one I feel passionately about."

---"My biggest challenge as a New Yorker is deciding which residents here are hopeless cases, and which residents here may appear to be hopeless cases, but aren't. The former group are depressing and demoralizing to associate with. The latter group can put a smile on your face. They give me the satisfaction of helping a fellow New Yorker achieve an all American-success story that no one else here expected him to achieve. It feels good at the special banquet honoring that individual to hear him tell everyone that I was one extremely rare New Yorker who expressed confidence in him during the many years when everyone else rated him as a nobody. I guess I'm a bit of a talent scout in the grand tradition of the Medici family of Italy during the Renaissance Era. I don't even have any Italian blood in me, but I can certainly admire the grand tradition of those Medicis at fostering greatness in others. Too bad there isn't an American Talent-Scout Award from a non-profit Medici Foundation in this country. I would win that award, for sure."

---"I still can't decide which cars' honks are the most pleasant to listen to here in Manhattan. You would think I'd be an expert on that subject, as often as the other motorists honk at me for driving too slow in New York."

---"Has anyone ever told you who coined the term 'ne'er-do-well', and whether the individual who coined that term was a New Yorker describing a fellow resident of this city?"

--"His only accomplishment from his first 20 years on this planet is that he's successful at playing video games. In fact, someday his epitaph will probably read: 'He exceled at playing video games, and nothing else'. Maybe that will serve as a lesson to future generations, as they ponder whether they want their own future tombstone to sum up their entire life like that."

---"I worry about the loss of thought-provoking epitaphs because of this trend away from tombstones. New Yorkers who ask for cremation of their own body after they die usually don't leave behind a pithy public statement summing up what they achieved in their life. I find that very sad."

---"You can't survive in New York City if you are susceptible to power of suggestion. Over the course of any given week, 100 New Yorkers will tell you to 'drop dead'. If you take them literally, you might either have a heart attack, trip on a crack in the sidewalk and end up in the hospital, or fall from the top of the Empire State Building."

---"New York City is the one city in the entire world where philanthropy and misanthropy are battling against each other the most fervently, on every street and alleyway of this city, on a year-round basis. It can be very exciting to watch the many year-round battles taking place in this city."

--"I always feel relieved when I see a black New Yorker ordering vanilla ice cream inside an ice cream shop here. It means that I can also order vanilla ice cream without anyone calling me a racist for doing so."

--"One of my favorite fantasies is a Manhattan restaurant named NARC's DELIGHT that is owned and operated by off-duty police officers who are not in uniform. Those NYPD officers would routinely administer breath tests and urine tests inside the restaurant to any customer who appears to be either intoxicated or high on illicit drugs. The drama from that restaurant would come from the frequent visits into that restaurant by NYPD officers in uniform as they handcuff and haul away the most recent round of criminal-law suspects from their dining table. It would be grand entertainment for everyone else dining at the restaurant. They could pat themselves on the back for having complied with the law that particular day."

---"Personally, I've always wanted to dine in a restaurant here in Manhattan that is dedicated to replicating the playing conditions of the board game 'Monopoly' at all times. If a customer in that restaurant picks the wrong playing card from his dining table, he goes directly to jail, a special holding facility inside that eatery, before he is released on bond in order to re-join his dining companions at their dinner table. Doesn't that sound like great fun for everyone?"

---"To me, the biggest surprise about New York City is that there is no restaurant here named 'Marvin Gardens' that features a beautiful indoor atrium and heavenly food that everyone in that restaurant can enjoy. That restaurant would have lots of popular appeal, since millions of Americans who enjoyed playing 'Monopoly' in their youth have had fantasies about enjoying a personal visit to Marvin Gardens."

---"I wish our mayor would keep a daily public record citing the age of each constituent of his whom Mayor Bloomfield granted a one-to-one meeting with at City Hall that day. I'm worried that New Yorkers under 18 may be under-represented in those individual meetings with the Mayor, which comprises a form of defacto disenfranchisement of that age group from dialogue opportunities with our City's top official. I also worry that the New Yorkers over age 70 are not getting enough opportunities for one-to-one-meetings with our Mayor. Either type of age-related discrimination by City Hall would pose a major concern for me."

---"Whenever I mail a thank-you card to a new acquaintance I've recently met here in New York, I always use my post-office box address as my return address on the envelope. This protects my personal safety in the event that the new acquaintance proves to be untrustworthy. My only worry is that if the guy I sent the thank-you card to is a stalker or criminal type, he might do some research to find out the postal station where my post-office box is located. Then he might hang out at that postal station in order to catch me by surprise as I casually pick up my latest mail delivery there. Nothing could be more enraging to me than to pick up my latest PO box delivery at the postal station only to be approached by a guy trying to kidnap me and ordering me at gunpoint to walk with him to his car!"

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