tavie.com

My good pal Terry gave me a beautiful watch for Christmas. I love this watch. I wear it all the time.

I was walking to school today, swinging my arms as people do when they walk, and passed over a subway grate, and woosh. Watch slipped right off my wrist and fell down into the subway grate.

I sort of stood there gaping down at it for awhile. I couldn't move. Couldn't quite bring myself to leave it. It was a very deep grate with pretty narrow openings, so there was no way of getting to it.

After awhile I sat down on the grate-- in the middle of the sidewalk on Lexington avenue-- and took some yarn out of my bag. And my latch-hook that I use to weave in yarn ends. I had some sort of cockeyed idea that I could tie the yarn around the latch-hook, lower it down and snag the watch.

A woman walking by paused to sympathize with my plight. She suggested that it would probably be there for awhile if I came back with something better to snag it with, like some wire or a fishing pole. I thanked her and she walked on. Then I went into the stationery store nearby, bought some extremely overpriced, extremely crappy masking tape, and hunkered back down, trying to get the yarn anchored to the hook.

All of a sudden there was the woman, standing in front of me with a spool of wire. This was a woman I'd never met in my life. Her name was Mary. She told me she went to the hardware store down the street and bought some wire. She'd told the hardware store guys what it was for and they advised her not to do it, said that it was probably a scam, but she said that she told them that no, it was just a nice girl who'd really lost her watch.

She wouldn't take any money or anything for the wire. So we both hunkered down now, and lowered the wire down. But we couldn't get any control with it. People were starting to stop now and offer us suggestions. One man came by and told me that I should get some nice, strong duct tape, ball it on the end, and use it to snag the watch. So I went back in the stationery store and bought some extremely overpriced, extremely crappy duct tape. It did not do the trick.

By this time a fair-sized crowd was gathered. There were many suggestions. The most popular suggestions was chewing gum. At least one out of every three people who walked by told me that I should stick some chewing gum on the wire. That's ridiculous. If duct tape isn't sticky enough to catch the watch, how is chewing gum gonna do the job?

Finally a man named Alex-- thick New York accent, just like Mary, so I knew they were both locals-- stepped forward and hung a weight from his keychain onto the wire, and the three of us crouched down and held our breaths as he tried again and again to snag the watch. There was a big crowd by now, and we all OOOOOHed when he finally managed to catch it, and AHHHHHHHed as he slowly brought it up, and D'OH!!!ed when he dropped it. Once, twice. The third time, oh-so-slowly, was the charm. And a rousing cheer and applause went through the crowd.

It was a beautiful, priceless moment. Because, you know, these sort of things happen all the time in cartoons and on Kate and Allie, but it doesn't often actually happen for real.

So that's why I asked for their names-- Mary and Alex, two complete strangers to eachother and to me, and Alex said he was glad to help and went on his way. And again I asked Mary if I could send her a check for the wire, and she told me no, but I could do something for her.

So together we went to the hardware store and I showed the man my watch and said to him, "There, don't be so cynical. New Yorkers are good people."

Why are you in Tavie's head? 9:20 PM | shower me with attention