because she doesn’t have a blog of her own (but REALLY should)

Posted by beth on April 27, 2008

The following is a story from DLF. She sent it to me about a month ago, and it’s been sitting in my inbox ever since. She has many other stories I’ll probably post as well, but really, DLF, you should start a blog of your own. This is priceless stuff. Thanks for sharing!

“Just thought you might like to hear about my evening.

It started earlier in the day– I was so tired at work that I was falling asleep in the middle of things and watching the minutes creep by at an excruciatingly slow rate.  I was supposed to have dinner that night at a couple’s house from my church so they could introduce me to a very nice woman about my age who works for the NY Phil and they thought we would enjoy each other.  Cool.

So I went home after work and stretched out to take a nap.  Then Mike Chen called and I talked to him for 20 minutes.  So I got up, dressed, and went downstairs, waited for the bus, and finally got on.  Went one stop, then realized I had forgotten to write down their address.  Got off the bus, sprinted back to my apartment, and checked my email to find the address.  Then I saw in the email that it said the week of March 17.  I was a week early!  So I laid back down, happy that I could go to sleep early.

My phone rang a bit later.  It was the lady who had invited me, and she said very politely (in her great British accent) “Are you coming to our house for dinner tonight?”  Somehow it had been confirmed for tonight, but because I saw the original email I had gotten confused.  At that point, I was an hour late!  Mortified, I said I’d be there in 20 minutes.  I ran back downstairs and waited AGAIN for the bus.  And waited.  and waited. and waited.  In the meantime, a very sweet and scared alley cat (the kind stores and restaurants keep around to control the vermin problem) had gotten closed out of his store and was darting nervously around the sidewalk unable to get inside.  When a bus came (not the one I needed) and stopped for awhile, he thought it would be a good thing to hide under and ran and sat right in front of a tire.  I screamed, “NO! NO!” and threw myself almost under the bus.  The hispanic people around me were very confused by my behavior.  I chased the cat out, and screamed and yelled hysterically every time he tried to return to the bus.  It was quite the scene.

Finally the bus came.  When I saw it was my bus coming, I reached in my bag… to NOT discover my wallet and thus, no metrocard.  So I ran back to my apartment AGAIN, retrieved my wallet, and realized I was going to have to break down and take a cab.  I ran downstairs, hailed a cab, and we started on our way.

I sat behind the empty passenger’s seat and had flung my bag over behind the driver, very near the other door.  Near 125th St (where the subway is at an overpass) we stopped at a light, and I saw a man approach the car from the rear on the driver’s side.  He began looking in the car, and suddenly I became nervous that if the door wasn’t locked he could open it and snatch my purse.  He was REALLY scoping us out.  So I grabbed my purse and pulled it close to me.  As I did, I looked at him again to get a good look and noticed that he had a gun (!!!!!) in a holster on his hip.  I promptly freaked out and started whimpering to the taxi driver that the man has a gun, the man has a gun, the man has a gun.  Akhmed’s  (or whatever the heck his name was) eyes became very big and he looked at me uncertainly and with grave concern.  I am not sure if he understood everything and may have even thought that I was threatening him.  Finally he was able to move away and we sped away… about the same time I looked at the man again and decided he must have been an undercover cop.  Still, I was pretty freaked out.

CRAZY!!!  I finally reached my destination and enjoyed good wine, FANTASTIC company, and shared my crazy story. How’s that for an evening with Lauren in NYC?”