Words and Pieces

My friends and I put on an art show once or twice a year in a car garage located in a long alleyway of garages that stretches the length of one full block, from Coles Street to Jersey Avenue in Jersey City.  It's not the ideal place for an art exhibit but over the last 10 plus years we have made it work.  The days of the exhibits we hang up signs on the side walls of the buildings at each end of the alley to direct people our way.  We have never had an issue so I was caught by surprise this past weekend when a man came walking towards us in a huff saying "no, no, what are you doing?" to which I replied "we are having an art show today".  Honestly my immediate response was to be irritated because we'd been doing this for years and then the man says angrily "you never take them down" which made me a little more irritated because I know we always take our signs down.  So I had just a few seconds to put thought into it and said in a calm sort of way...

This morning on my way to the train I was so very much in my head and became slightly annoyed because a couple was walking a bit too slow in front of me. See, it’s a NYC thing that I’ve unfortunately developed, walking fast and being unhappy when people are not walking at the same pace. We are all walking past a construction site and I make my move to go around them, then the woman lifts her arm, points and says loudly to her man friend “Look at the Hoe!” I thought it was amusing that she was excited by the site of a backhoe on a construction site so as I walked to their left I exclaimed “Who you calling a Ho?!” We all looked at one another and laughed a really good laugh. They were good sports, we had a moment, and I felt a tinge of guilt for faulting them for their slow walking. You never know how cool people really are until you give them a chance!