My in laws were in town, visiting from sunny Florida for the weekend. The big question on Sunday was, do we try and cram eight people into a seven- seater car and take everyone up North to Westchester county to watch my daughter Marlee play in her travel soccer team? We pondered long and hard about it. We had worked out who would sit on whose lap and were about to leave when the two boys voiced their opinion and staged a mutiny.
Its not often that I refer to my two boys as "revolting" but that was the stage they were in, and they were adamant that they should not have to be lifted out of Manhattan and transported North for two hours to another County. The Grandparents definitely wanted to see their granddaughter play and my wife wanted to spend the day with her parents, so I kindly volunteered to take the boys out for the day in Manhattan.
My eldest son Jonah on hearing that he didn't have to watch girls soccer, immediately requested that we do something outside of the cocoon between 68th street and 86th street on the East Side. He wanted downtown. And in that context we planned our day, just the boys, including me. Of course we were not allowed to venture outside of the neighborhood until a whole list of chores had been done, including the fetching of baseball uniforms, the preparing of dinner and general clearing up of the apartment.
I do love taking the kids out exploring in Manhattan as there is literally so much to do and many distinct neighborhoods to uncover. We decided on Little Italy, a good four miles south of my street and a great place to get desert. It is impossible to just visit Little Italy as it has all but been swallowed up by the ever expanding, encroaching Chinatown. Thus we decided to include both neighborhoods on our tour. We left the Upper East Side via the subway and took the thirteen stops south to our destination. We disembarked at Canal Street. We ventured up the few steps to ground level and found ourselves immersed in the hustle bustle of a busy market place. We were immediately approached by street sellers looking to fob off their fake designer merchandise and many people selling watches. It didn't click that the watch sellers were trying to dispose of illegal watches as the time change was still on my mind as my internal clock was off by an hour. I honestly thought these pushy salespeople were selling watches because of the confusion of the time change ,so early in March. Then my teenage son pointed out that the watches were either fakes or stolen and realized he is much more street smart than me.
Being the only adult present, I immediately took charge as to where we should be walking. I am not very good with directions once the numbered streets run out in Manhattan but I wasn't going to admit this to the boys. So we crossed the street and headed in what I thought was the right direction. After walking for two minutes I suddenly realized that we had made the wrong turn. So I gave the excuse that I had missed showing the boys something in the other direction and we about turned. I honestly thought that Little Italy was North of Canal street but that is Nolita. So when I had led my boys for forty minutes on a wild goose chase they both turned to me and said, " why don't you ask someone?" And so I did.
I turned towards a kiosk and quietly approached the candy and tobacco seller with my question about Little Italy. I spoke with THE strongest English accent that I could muster ,with a small heaping of pompousness thrown in on top. I sounded like a completely lost tourist which was my intention. I did not under any circumstances want to appear like a confused New Yorker. The kiosk person gave me exact directions which were totally simple to follow. We were in the right area just the wrong neighborhood. I had experienced a momentary lapse in "common sense of direction". Little Italy is indeed South of Canal. Anyways the boys started laughing as we walked towards our chosen destination. I asked them what was so funny and they retorted. " Dad, you wrote a book about New York and you know nothing about it!" I had no response. At that instance, it was true.
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