Metropolitan Diary analysis: 2006-05-22

OK, it's only Thursday, so I'm catching back up. If they print one on Memorial Day, I'm not working, so maybe I'll actually get one of these out day of print, a rare treat for my reader(s).

Anyway, only one shocking coincidence this week. So maybe my life isn't turning into the Metropolitan Diary after all. Whew!

• "Attractive young girl" grabs old man to help him across the street. He asks if she is trying to pick him up, but she says she's trying to keep him from falling down. Ha ha, he's old! Category: New Yorkers Aren't So Bad, After All!
  
• Clueless dowager asks neighbor where laundry room and also how to operate the machines, because her "housekeeper is ill". Category: New York Eccentrics
  
• Grandmother disparages crowd of tourists in the Metropolitan Museum of Art to young grandson as worse than the subway. Category: Jaded New Yorkers
• Litigator's use of fancy words confuses operator at cable company. What has our society come to, that someone who answers the phone at the cable company doesn't understand the word "germane"? Category: Amusing Misspellings Not sure why this one annoyed me... I guess it's that on the one hand, the writer attempts to be somewhat humble ("Often we forget to put aside our newly acquired legalese when we engage in everyday conversations") but really it seems to me that the point of this is to make fun of a cable company operator for confusing the term "germane" with the name "Jermaine". As in, "Oh, those uneducated phone operators; they just can't understand English like we Columbia Law graduates!"
  
• 3.5-year-old says "Abracadabra!" when asked for "the magic word". Cheeky little devil! Category: Precocious NY Kids
  
• Writer's kids learn the word "escargot" from their New York grandparents. Precocious NY Kids The kids are not from NYC, but they are beginning to pick up the pretentions of a New Yorker.
  
• This week's poem is perhaps the worst piece of doggerel I've yet seen in the Diary, and I wouldn't normally bring it up, but it references a movie being shot on West 92nd St a few weeks ago, and how bright the lights were. Reason to feel that my life is becoming just like a Metropolitan Diary entry: I remember that movie being shot, and the bright lights shone in my apartment, just like the author of the poem!
  
• Young boy screams for his Metrocard, is given a discarded one from the floor of the bus, shuts up, bus passengers are happy. Category: Precocious NY Kids
  

Totals for this Metropolitan Diary:
Amusing Misspellings: 1
Jaded New Yorkers: 1
New York Eccentrics: 1
New Yorkers Aren't So Bad, After All: 1
Precocious NY Kids: 3

Totals YTD:
Amusing Misspellings: 12
Jaded New Yorkers: 23
New York Eccentrics: 22
New Yorkers Aren't So Bad, After All: 13
Oh, Those Fast-Paced New Yorkers!: 11
Precocious NY Kids: 27
Precocious NY Pets: 6
Rubes in the Big City: 15
Single New York Woman's Perspective: 3
WTF: 2