Mean Girl

Its happened. I'm turning into a mean girl.

A couple days ago I posted the Sunscreen Song which stated "live in New York once, but leave before it makes you hard." I've been hearing that sentence since I was 17yrs old and each and every time I thought : impossible.

Me, hard? I'm the softest, nicest girl ever..to strangers that is.

So it was to my grand surprise that the past several times Ive been on the phone with either my mom or friends while ordering my Subway sandwich, they've shrieked at disgust with the way I spoke to these strangers who staffed the sandwich-makin'line.

"MORE LETTUCE!"

"Umm...can you not only put that on HALF of the sandwich?"

" I said PROVOLONE!!!!!!!"

I have no patience, Ive lost it. It disappeared 2 months ago when I was shoved, pushed, and sneered at on the streets of Manhattan. There is no time for niceness here, it literally is a land of the 'eat or be eaten'.

In fact, I don't even mind when a man isn't chivalrous anymore. There is no time. Imagine if a guy had to wait for every girl to get out of the subway before he got out, he'd be in Staten Island and back by then. Holding the door? Yea, if you want a herd of 76 rushing women to take advantage of it. Umbrella-less waiting for a cab? Oh well sista, wait your turn, so has everyone else.

So yea, you toughen up not because NY makes you a mean person, but because its the only way you can get by. There really is not enough loose change in the world to satisfy all the homeless and charities on the streets out there everyday trying to get by. Its unfortunate and sad but its true. At first I tried but its come to a point where it just never stops and you have to start choosing wisely knowing that by the time you get home, you will definitely have turned down at least 10 people.

I'm going to end this on a good note though. The other day I was walking to work and I saw a dollar on the street. I picked it up, not because I needed it for my daily Diet Dr. Pepper, but because it was going to be the dollar that set off a series of fortunate events. As luck would have it, later on that day at Bryant Park, a mute/deaf man came to me with a card saying "Smile!" that also had the entire Sign Language alphabet and a pencil. He 'sold' it to me for my one lucky dollar.

In my dream world, he then used it to pay his rent which then helped the landlord buy his wife the birthday present she wanted which made her so happy then she took her son to the park and bought him an ice cream cone from the student who needed money to pay tuition...so forth so on.

Maybe it went that way, maybe it didn't. But oh well, we all have the God Given right to dream of a happier world. In the meantime, Im off to the streets to work on my niceness... get outta the way.