Only in NY
There’s no place like
New York. I
live in a nice two building compound, and the landlord is a decent guy. I have an office in our kitchen with a
window looking out to the courtyard. Our porter is from the Dominican Republic.
People from the Caribbean salute
one another with a “Vaya!” which can translate to there you are. At some point our landlord started hiring Mexican handymen for
the other building. Their salutation is “Ora le!” Which I believe is a
construction with Ola, (a standard Castilian salutation which means hello), and Ora,
which means time. I have no idea what the hell Orale means. But, every morning
as I sat with my tea by the window, Dominic would greet me with,
“Vaya!”
He’s a big boxing,
and Yankees fan, and we would chat a bit about sports. One day as he was walking across the yard, he looked at me and said,
“Vaya le!”
He froze with a
puzzled look on his mug, thinking he had said something dumb, but not being able to put his finger on it.
“Ya bin hanging wid
dem Mexicans, uh…haw haw haw.”
As he realized what he
had done, he began to laugh. Only in New
York I mused, as he lit up one of his Pall Malls,
waved, and kept on trucking. Anxiety comes in all kinds of forms, and when it does we light up.
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