Times Square, Small Talk and the Titanic

This past Saturday afternoon I took the train in to Manhattan. I met my singles group near Times Square and visited the Titanic Exhibition. You can meet interesting people on the Long Island Railroad. My friend told me on her LIRR line she met this Asian woman in her 60's. It sounds like my Mom's profile for starters.

According to my friend, she had a hippie look to her. This amazing woman was never married. She's a nurse for the American Red Cross who has lived all over the world as a consequence of her job. On her own, she raised six children, four of whom she adopted in third world countries and two from her deceased brother. All this on her own! Imagine that.

She was taking a train into the city all the way from Suffolk County just to buy special ingredients to make Asian dishes. That's dedication. I don't understand why in light of there being wonderful women like her in this world men are marrying and reproducing with these shrews who make their lives difficult and only want their husbands' paychecks. And then generous women like Nurse Red Cross who are good cooks and manage to raise six kids solo remain spinsters.

Before I embark on another "Why her and not me" war dance, I want to take a moment to express how much this woman's story has inspired me. Someday I do plan to start a family of my own with or without a man. I'm a phenomenal cook, too. My kids will love me. I'd love to be the kind of mother that this nurse is.

As I got off the train at Penn Station, I was tempted to walk up ten blocks but felt pressed for time and decided to hop on the 2. I'm not a human compass or GPS system. I have a complete lack of direction by foot and car.  So when I got off the train and exited from the turnstile I saw a sign for NW exit.

I was trying to navigate uptown two blocks. Wouldn't North be a higher number? SOHO is in the southern part of Manhattan whereas Harlem is in the north. Logically if I were going north regardless of whether I'm heading east or west, I would assume the street numbers would go up. Right? Wrong. I end up on West 41st. Rats! 

Before I realized I was heading in the wrong direction, a street corner solicitor tried to stop me, waving pamphlets with pizza coupons in my face. I walked past him quickly. I hate soliciting. I did a 180 and turned to find him coughing up a wad of phlegm and spitting it out near the entrance of a restaurant. I thought to myself, I'll pass on that pizza. It made the Fish and Chips I ate later on taste that much better. That's what I love about Irish pubs in Manhattan; I've never tried fish and chips I didn't like.

So, I'm looking at the Titanic artifacts as soon as they give me my mock boarding pass. You're supposed to check at the end of the exhibit to see if your passenger survived. My person did. But one of her children died as did two men who accompanied her. I felt a bit guilty for somebody. Our admission fee is paying someone's salary. It's almost blood money when you consider the thousands who perished.

I remember watching Titanic starring Leonardo DiCaprio with my mother when it came out in 1997. (They had a viewing in the gift shop.) It wasn't the three-hour duration that irked me as much as the fact that Jack didn't survive and that Rose's arrogant ex-fiance did only to blow his brains out when the market crashed in '29. But I promised myself not to sit through it again because it was a reenactment of how people actually died in a real-life tragedy. 

As I came to the first artifacts on display at the exhibit - clippings from periodicals, I snapped a photo only to be stopped by a guard. She politely reminded me that the works were copyrighted and that the items were delicate because they were at one time soaked in water and are very old. I immediately placed my camera back in the bag for the remainder of the tour.

This little encounter was reminiscent of my trip to the Vatican. The guards at the Sistine Chapel are notoriously rude. They yell at tourists not to take photographs, but they continue to do so even after being instructed not to. This girl was polite when she told me not to photograph Titanic artifacts. I listened. Compare and contrast with the dudes in Vatican City. People listen when you are nice; they don't if you yell.

The Titanic displays included actual replicas of the furniture in first class cabins and a menu from Cafe Parisien where these upper crust passengers dined. They even saved cooking oil from Parisien. Cooking oil from almost a century ago! Gross! That's one valuable artifact they don't have to worry about being stolen unless someone has a strong stomach.