When I moved to New York, Mr. G would always tell me, "Don't let New York get you!". Meaning, don't get raped, killed, mugged....In other words, don't become an episode of Law and Order: SVU (which I had to stop watching after I moved. It freaked me out recognizing places they filmed). I didn't live in a super sketchy area, but I wasn't living in the poshest of places either. I lived in a neighborhood called Hamilton Heights in Upper Manhattan on 136th street, between Broadway and Amsterdam. It was a cozy, quiet street with an elementary school, tennis court, and basketball court, across the street.
The view from my fire escape
My bedroom was tiny, but hey, it's New York, most are. The bed was placed right again the wall with the windows, with the window to the fire escape in the middle of the bed. See below.
Upon waking up, I could look right out the window and see what the weather had in store for me.
"It's happened. New York got me! SVU here I come. Only I don't get to meet Mariska!"
Once the initial panic started to subside, I snuck to the foot of the bed by the wall, closest to the left side of the window, to peek behind the curtain to see my rapist/murder and figure out just how close he was to pouncing....and to see what my chances were.
Now, you may be thinking, why didn't you just leave your bedroom? To that I say, rational people may do that and many other wiser things, but I was in no such rational state.
Anyway, what I saw when I carefully moved the curtain back, just so, was a man in a paint-suit, crouching to paint the fire escape. Not a crouching rapist. Phew!
After the relief set in, I wanted to become a murder myself and kill the super who had not notified us that someone would be painting the fire escape. The super was not the sharpest tool in the shed (I could write many a blog about him...).
New York may have not gotten me physically that day, but it definitely got me mentally. Thank you, Steve the Super....
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