Traveling Beyond the Comfort Zone

I like being at my house.  Several of my all-time favorite people live there.  Wanderlust is not part of my DNA and I find I get more and more curmudgeon-like as I get older and assiduously avoid being with large groups of people (large being anything over six).  I put all that aside a couple of weeks ago and got on a plane which took me over 1,500 miles away from my comfy house to a place populated by way more than six people, New York City. 

This was a trip taken by just me and my oldest daughter, Emilyjane.  We had been planning it for weeks and weeks and I have to say it turned out pretty darned good, even if there are entirely too many people everywhere you turn there. 

Our hotel was just a couple blocks from Times Square so after we got safely checked in and our gear stashed we walked over to be wide-eyed Kansas tourists.  Do you remember the game Red Rover from your grade school days?  That is the game where two groups of people face each other and call out to send over a person to see if he or she can break through the line.  Well, standing at the corner of 45^th Street and 7^th Avenue waiting for the light to change felt like a weapons grade plutonium version of Red Rover.  “Red Rover, Red Rover, send the entire population of Inman right over.”

Actually, the pedestrian traffic lights on New York streets are more suggestions than actual rules of the road.  It surprised me how quickly Emilyjane and I, law-abiding Midwestern salt of the earth people, started brazenly crossing against the light.  At first I joked that New Yorkers can smell fear but really it is not a matter of fear.  New Yorkers are not sharks looking for weak and scared tourists to bite in half.  The crux of the matter is they simply respect decisiveness.  If you are willing to make a choice in a timely manner and stick to it you will be fine (but you still need to be fully aware that a taxi cab driver will run you over without spending any time at all trifling with the brake pedal or a sense of remorse). 

I very much enjoyed seeing the big city through the eyes of my daughter.  When we were first riding into town from the airport her head was on a swivel trying to see as much as possible.  She actually said, “I need more eyes.”  We are both big fans of theater but I missed occasional parts of the shows we attended because I was watching her watch the show.  Definitely one of the best perks of being a dad.

It was also fun to experience parts of New York through the eyes of smaller children, especially smaller children who I was not in the least bit responsible for because traveling with toddlers in this environment would be exhausting.  We were in the Disney store.  The lower level was mostly stuffed animals, clothes and princess dolls.  We were standing on the second level a few feet from a display of super hero toys when a little boy reached the crest of the escalator and the various Avengers came into view.  He immediately made a beeline for the nearest Iron Man toy saying, “This is more like it.” 

I have to say the sheer volume of smiling and good will was a bit of surprise to me, the unseasoned traveler.  I still had a prejudice that big city folk would be, not so much rude as entirely too driven and harried to be fun to interact with, wrongo.  Truly, except for the one food service guy who was moving at his own sweet time causing Emilyjane to contemplate jumping over the counter and deep fat frying his fingers because he didn’t seem at all concerned that she had ordered a drink and her current state of thirst was making her just a tad irritable, everyone we deal t with was pleasant, helpful and laughed and joked right along with us. 

Frequently in life I have found the ability to freely admit ignorance and ineptitude followed by the willingness to put myself in someone else’s hands makes that person not only smile but they work really hard to help.  Everyone likes feeling valuable and I have no trouble doing my best Blanche DuBois (sans southern accent, flowing frock and alcoholic tendencies) and relying on the kindness of strangers.

 

Christopher Pyle will probably do more columns about the New York trip, maybe allowing him to write it off as a business expense.  You can contact him, unless you work for the IRS, at occasionallykeen@yahoo.com.