Bubbie and the Spacechair

Good day, guys. Good day, good day.  The sun is finally out and new York is less grumpy.  This afternoon a group of us went down to the Imperial Theater to shoot some audience testimonials for Nice Work if You Can Get It, which is a pretty typical thing for us to do.  We pick a specific demographic, take the camera equipment down through Times Square to the theater, then catch people as they leave the show to record their thoughts.  Today’s demographic was ‘old ladies from Long Island’ (pronounced LOHng – g – EYelind).  My job is to “wrangle”.  I’m pretty scrappy and consider myself a pretty good wrangler in life in general, but in this case I grab the women coming out of the show and ask if they want to be on camera.  I hadn’t done one of these in a while and forgot that while some of them politely agree or decline – some of them PEE. THEIR. GERSHWIN-LOVING. PANTS. I mean they are JACKED to talk about how much they liked the show and ON CAMERA!? Sign me up, Sweet-Haht!  It reminded me (as my job often does) that this is cool! Broadway shows are cool and New York City is cool!  Like anywhere you live, you get used to it after a while and it doesn't feel so special anymore.  I feel a bit swallowed-up by it all and then I’m reminded, by someone’s Jewish grandmother, that this thing that has become mundane, is actually pretty sweet.

It reminded me of a story that a friend of a friend posted on Facebook. He’s from New Jersey but currently living and working overseas.  I’ll use his words:

I was wheeling a discarded desk chair loudly up the street this evening and from many I received frowns and questioning glances. But this little girl, maybe 4 or 5, walking with her family looked at it with curious eyes. The mother said something that I sounded like, "Do you want to ride?" I turned the seat to the excited little face with some machine sound and we rolled up the sidewalk with her family making car noises. This strange action of doing something unusual brought at least 30 extra seconds of joy to this little girl and her family and definitely to myself. Mix it up.

Lesson learned: Kids see stuff through the lens of opportunity. A lens I think many of us have removed. Be brave enough to think outside the box and ignore what the people on the sidewalk might think. They'll be scowling at the norm. You'll be giggling in your space chair.

 

I love that – you’ll be giggling in your spacechair. That little girl didn’t give those dirty-lookers one minute of her time because she was busy riding around in her bad-ass spacechair.  And what a cool guy for meeting her where she was that night.  He could have easily rolled on passed them as well.

I love being reminded not to lose that curiosity and excitement.  Life really is too short to worry about what the people on the sidewalk are thinking.  Jump In. Sometimes it just takes a little nudge from a little girl (or in my case, a Bubbie).

Keeping ya posted-

 - d

ps - that picture is not the little girl from the story.  It's just a funny and semi-relevant picture I saw on the internet and I took it.  But I think they can get you fro that, right?  The internet people?  Publicity!  

pps - Look at me learnin Jewish things!  Bubbie!  Who woulda thought....