I had a visitor staying in my house the week after Christmas. He had never been to NYC and his strange observations about our city reminded me of the 1984 John Sayles movie "Brother from Another Planet" in which an alien tries to makes sense of New York.
On one level, my guest's observations about NYC were off the wall; on another level they were refreshing and a clear example of thinking out of the box.
For instance, we were walking along and he kept staring at all the fire escapes on some Chinatown buildings.
"What's the matter?" I asked.
"Do people really have to climb all those stairs every time they want to go to their apartments?"
I explained that, no, residents did not have to pull down a fire escape and make like a gymnast in order to get to their apartments at the end of a busy day. There were inside stairways.
Then we found ourselves in a subway station after we'd narrowly missed a train pulling out of the station.
"When does it come back?"
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"Well you know, how long does it take to make the loop and get back here."
He thought there was just one subway train that went round and round. I explained that, even though NYC can sometimes appear a little shall we say Goofy, it is definitely not Disneyland.
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