I’m a white woman who for years worked in a public high school in New York’s inner city – in fact in the infamous south Bronx of Fort Apache fame.
I usually carpooled to work with fellow teachers but at times took the subway from my upper east-side Manhattan neighborhood . As you may know on any New York subway platform you’ll find a motley crew of subway-riders waiting for trains. That was true at both ends of my trip, although the Manhattan station had lots more white folks in business dress, carrying the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal, heading to or from the office.
On the Bronx platform the faces were mostly black or brown reflecting the demographics of the neighborhood, with fewer business suits, fewer newspapers under arms, and more guys wearing hoodies.
Was I ever fearful? No, but it’s the white guy with the MAGA hat I’d worry about now.
Fears? Hmmm. Phobias? Double Hmmm. I’ve scanned through the decades of my life and come up short. Discrete memories of discomfort are vivid, but they remain in their specific time and space, like my discomfort riding at over night camp. To be sure I have dislikes, like severe turbulence, but fortunately they have yet to rise to the level of fear, or phobia. I admit to some modicum of the classic female ‘fear of failure’, but that too is not quite genuine. In scouring my trove of memories, as one might search for a lost tiny gem in a musty attic, I’ve come up short; that is blank. Alas, I can’t lay claim to a fear or a phobia. But I do have FOMO! Is this a phobia?
When I was a kid there were two stores In my Bronx neighborhood we called the “five-and-dimes”. One was Woolworth which of course was a national chain, and the other was Fishers which I think was just a local store. Yet to my child’s sensibility they were both grand emporiums selling priceless treasures, and I remember shopping there with my grandmother.
She and my grandfather lived about a hour away by car in Far Rockaway, and of course we’d often visit back and forth. But after my grandfather died, although she had a license, my grandmother was nervous about driving long distances alone, and so to visit us she came by bus. And I remember waiting for her at the bus stop which was on the same block as Fishers, and when she got off the bus we’d go into the store together and I’d pick out a little glass animal to add to my prized collection.
And although it seems a lifetime ago, I remember how grown up I felt shopping for my glass menagerie in that local five-and-dime.
And I remember how proud I felt shopping there with you, Grandma.
Not all kids, or adults for that matter, love dogs. Can’t there be a few dog-free public spaces where a young girl can ride her bike or play or simply take a walk and feel safe? Read More
