A NEW YORK MINUTE

Like a slice of hot pizza at four a.m., some things can only happen in this city.

Some summer afternoon, some years ago, I was churning along 42nd street to meet an old chum for a drink. When I stopped at a corner for a red light a young Black man approached with a batch of CD’s he’d obviously recorded himself, a budding musician hustling best he could. 

“Great riffs,” he said to me. “Cheap. You got to get one.”

“No, thanks,”I said, fingers crossed I even had the coins in pocket for a Bloody Mary, “But my son’s a musician, so I know how tough it is. Mazel tov,” and started across the street. He followed me.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“What’s what?”

“That tov stuff.”

“Mazel tov?”

“Yeah. That.”

At this point, a passerby, a woman in an overcoat who could have been a librarian but a tough one, says to the kid, “You live in New York City, and you don’t know what mazel tov is?” The kid looked dumbfounded. "It means Good luck,” she said.

                "Good luck," I said."Mazel tov."

“Yeah. Mazel tov,” the young man said. His smile was brighter than the traffic light.

The librarian kept on walking, didn’t miss a step. Me? It was a moment Allen Ginsberg would have been happy to claim - an angel headed hipster moment. I wanted my life to be a collection of those moments, jewels wrapped in black velvet, to be unwrapped from time to time, spread out and savored as the gifts they are intended to be.