Nothing New

My thinking about stray shots may seem a little odd to some, but it is not unusual for me to consider plans A and B if a disaster occurs. I guess that developed in New York City. My first plan was an escape route from a fast flooding Holland Tunnel. We often spent the weekend in New Jersey, taking Daisy the cat and Calypso the German Shepard. I guess I assumed I would be fine and just swim to the surface. I knew the dog probably could do the same thing and would come with when called, but there was no way in hell the cat would come when called. So my plan Was to grab her by the scruff of the neck and keep her with me come hell or… Actually we got Calypso because we bought an apartment in East Greenwich Village, in the neighborhood now called Alphabet City. In the late 70's it was very much a ghetto. But we couldn't afford the $40,000 penthouse at 96th and Madison, which wasn't that great a neighborhood at the time. So we bought the first floor of a brownstone on Tompkins Square, Park for $14,500. With that move pending we also invested in a black German Shephard, which we charged at Gimbal's department store, against every one's advice not to buy from a puppy mill seller. She was our insurance and proofed invaluable many a time. Other precautions included wearing a trenchcoat over my going out clothes if we were eating uptown at 21, our weekly haunt. I always clutched a fistful of keys sticking out between my fingers when walking around the neighborhood. I wasn't afraid. Just guarding against possibilities. In fact, I might even have been asking for trouble. For instance some guy walking toward me touched my crotch as he passed by and I turned around and slugged him in the shoulder. When a thug and his pitbull were in our community garden picking all the open daffodils, I reprimanded him. In response, his pitbull attacked me. Fortunately they inside and I was outside the ancient, heavy duty, decorative wrought iron barrier, otherwise I would've been chopped liver. The beast did cleanly rip a chunk out of my beautiful, lime green, boucle coat (actually good riddance. I wore it to my first college mixer and not one boy spoke to me. Luckily, I was waiting for my date with a guy on the football team.) In a movie theater I stood up and screamed at the stranger who touched my knee. Another of my preparedness modes was looking up, as I had seen many objects fall from buildings as I walked and bicycled around Manhattan. I may have saved several peoples lives as I watched a 4' x 8' piece of corrugated metal float down from a construction site on third Avenue. I screamed a warning to the pedestrians who scattered, avoiding sure death. That sheet of metal ripped a hole in the sidewalk as it clattered to the ground. Once we left the terrors of NYC and movd to suburban Boston my preparedness did not wane. First of all I was terrified by many little things like reflections (of passing cars or the postman coming to the front door) in our picture window overlooking our beautiful pond. I was not used to the bucolic silence and nearly hit the ceiling every time something unexpected passed by. At that time Sarah Pryor had been abducted in the town next to ours and I became hyper vigilant about watching my child. And other peoples children. Driving down what is a rather main thoroughfare in our quiet suburb, I saw a little boy on a bicycle alone. I stop the car, talked to the bo, walked him home and warned his mother he was much too young to be alone. I made a rule that our boys couldn't ride alone until they weighed 125 pounds, which I later raised to 150 pounds. George could never understand that, when I would let him walk to the corner store in Brooklyn, New York, with a little boy that he didn't really know, far younger and lighter. I explained that there are people loose in New York City and there is some recourse if something bad happens. If the school closed for a bomb scar, I would not let the kids go back until they figured out who had had phoned it in, no matter how long it took. If they went away with friends they had to write their telephone number, in indelible marker on their thighs, even if only off to the slopes for the day. We spent New Year's Eve, 2000, in New Hampshire because I figured that there would be a major terrorist attack on that night in urban areas, especially Times Square. My stepson had been scouting locations in the area and given access to roof tops without showing any ID. I couldn't watch the ball drop that year. We bought the place in Waterville Valley so that thes boys wouldn't be home on weekends to go to the drinking parties. I admit I do sound a little Looney tune. But those drives up to New Hampshire with the boys and their friends were the best Treasure ever. And they were completely independent, being able to walk and take the shuttle everywhere. They were even younger when they had that independence at Chautauqua institution. They could bicycle anywhere in the gated community explore and experience life without boundaries so to speak. I did learn later that someone tried to sell them marijuana on the bridge over the gulley near the boys club. There's a great old cartoon in the New Yorker with a lady sitting on the porch wiggling her finger at her kids and saying I want you home not one minute after dark. My advice to my children is to let their children grow up in a neighborhood where they have some sense of that old-time security and real-life experiences, having to deal with the same people over and over again without parental interference. In other ways I was remarkably careless and lenient. I almost can't believe I let Blake race an electric tricycle down my parents' long, steep driveway crashing into the garage door, no helmets no nothing. Or give permission to underage George to drive until the oil pan breaks, Which it eventually did on the 2 mile long dirt road to her camp in Maine. More about the adventure home in another blog maybe one day. I do have to get off this damn iPhone and start working on iPad at least. The little bit of editing I am doing is tedious to do on this tiny device. Plus photos and this will be much more fun.