Last week, I was having lunch in Bryant Park. For those of you who don’t live here, Bryant Park is the large park in the middle of the working week part of town, at the back of the research library. There are several terraces all around the perimeter of a large lawn, and these terraces have a lot of little green, metal tables and folding chairs, and during lunchtime (or just after work) during the week, every single inch of space is occupied with businesspeople eating street meat and soba and pizza slices and overpriced panini, and with tourists licking ice cream cones and pointing their cameras everywhere.
At any rate, I was sitting at a table I’d managed to grab, and I heard a giant, crashing sound. I looked up just in time to see a giant tree branch crashing down from above. A man, woman and young boy scattered as it broke across a garbage can. The boy immediately grabbed his shoulder and opened his mouth in shock, then closed it again. None of this was funny. But what happened next was hilarious.
Immediately, a park security guard came over with a walkie-talkie and three men in plain clothes. They rushed up, faces full of concern, and began to interview everyone at the scene. They examined the pieces of the branch, where they’d broken into bits and fallen to either side of the trashcan. They interviewed everyone at the scene, except for the boy, who was still holding his shoulder and silently opening and closing his mouth like a goldfish. I assume he was trying not to cry (he was about 13). A guy came along with a giant dolly to wheel away the wreckage. Many people who’d been witnesses came up to offer their testimony. The boy’s mother retold the tale over and over, with large, explanatory gestures, and she and the security guard spent much time determining at exactly what point the branch had collided with the trashcan, and scrutinizing the trashcan at the spot in question. A tourist with a digital camera was enlisted to take numerous photographs of the scene. Everybody got on cell phones, and began to explain what had happened to various people who hadn’t been there, but might need to know. Apparently, if a tree falls in Bryant Park, the situation will be handled.
Speaking of interesting things I’ve observed recently, on Saturday, I was walking around Prospect Park, and I found myself behind two women who were swinging a little girl between them. The little girl told one of the women that it was her turn now, and she took the place of the little girl, and leapt into the air, to feign being swinged.
‘Whooo!’ she said. ‘I almost got off the ground there.’
The next day, Sunday, I was walking in the Village, and I passed a little boy and a man, with another man between them, all holding hands. The man leapt into the air, as if being swung by the other man and the boy.
‘Whooo!’ he said. ‘I got a little height there.’
It was weird.
