I Shouldn't Think So Much

I came to sit in central park today, to escape the anxiety over not having a temp position, and I was just struck by a really odd thought, which isn't so much odd as unsettling. I'm amazed that I can love this city so much and still feel so much like an outsider here. I'm sitting by the bowling lawns near Sheeps Meadow, and I looked south across the meadow to the high rise buildings of Central Park South - and was suddenly struck by the thought that I'm no more than a fifth floor person here in the city. It feels like my life is meant to take place down in the streets with the masses; I'll only be found in the upper stories of those aeries when I'm working or serving someone. New York City, it seems to me - at least today - is a lot like high school. I want rather desperately to belong, and don't. And any other day, I think that thought would only make me more determined to get the things I want, but today that makes me kinda sad.

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The lack of temp work notwithstanding, I don't really have all that much to be sad about. The day is absolutely beautiful and I can't think of any place I'd rather be... including working.

As you know, one of the things I love most about New York City is Sheeps Meadow in Central Park. And the only thing I like more than Sheeps Meadow is watching the eye candy in Sheeps Meadow. I'm kidding, of course. The eye candy is very nice, though.

I actually tried to focus more on the scenery than the eye candy of the human form... I'm still a little leery of my whole voyeuristic tendency. I need someone who invites me to take his picture. I did, however, have the foresight to bring my tripod along, and took a few snaps of myself. Most of them were deleted as soon as I saw them... I think I'm putting on weight and I was a little appalled. I didn't mind this one so much.

There was a phenomenon I noticed a lot of... nannies bringing their charges to hang out in Sheeps Meadow. As a matter of fact, it seemed to me that there were a lot more nannies with kids than there were families with kids. I wonder what it's like to grow up with a nanny. Or do they just call them "babysitters" when you're rich?

When I was a little kid, our neighbor lady Mrs. Miller watched over us while my mom & dad were off at work. Seeing these babysitter/nannies hanging around the park makes me think a lot about when I was a little kid. Granted, I was probably five or six years older than most of the kids that these professional nannies are watching, but I think kids during the years I was growing up were a lot more "off the leash" than kids are today. I'll never forget falling off the front of my sister's bike and smashing up my face ("So that's what happened to it," I hear yourself saying. Smartass.) and crying all the way home: "Don't tell Mrs. Miller what happened." Like she wasn't going to notice that my face was one big road-burn if I just managed to pull it together and act calm.

My point, though, is that we weren't watched day and night when I was a child. Our parents tried to impart a bit of common sense and a sense of responsibility and the feeling that you were gonna be trusted as far as you were able to display your ability to earn that trust. So it was no big deal for us to get home from school, drop our crap at Mrs. Miller's house, and head off for afternoons filled with adventures (and bike accidents), and not be seen again until it was dinner time, or 'til my parents got home from work. And that seemed right. I'm not saying things are bad today, with kids really needing to be watched constantly, or with parents feeling a heightened sense of responsibility about making sure their kids are safe and watched after, but it seems to me that something's been lost. And maybe that's how I know I'm getting old: nostalgia for the good old days?