Momnesia

Overheard in New York... Six years Ago

From OverheardinNewYork.com

Tourist kid: Look! The Empire State Building!
Tourist mom: Where? I don't see it.
tourist kid: The big, pointy one!
Tourist mom: Oooh, let's take a picture!
Passerby: That's the Chrysler Building, you fucks.

Yeah. That would seem like a really mean thing to say to someone, except the last time I went to New York, I chaperoned a gaggle of Augusta State University college students. They were of legal drinking age, which concerned me, but all they really wanted to do was attend seminars and go see the Empire State Building.

"Uh! You guys! There it is!" I whined and pointed.
"We want to go see it," Jennifer said.
"It's a million blocks away! It just looks close because of... uh... forced perspective, or something. It's a known fact that objects on the New York City skyline are further away than they appear," I said. But they weren't listening to me. Heather grabbed my arm and pulled me along.
We walked and laughed for a few blocks, six or seven of us free from exams, essays, waiting tables, editing a magazine, or anything else except to hang out in one of the biggest, most exciting cities in the world.
But I didn't want to walk 25 blocks to see a building I could just as easily see in "King Kong." If I were ever to watch "King Kong." Really, is there anything about the Big Apple that hasn't been exploited in a movie or an episode of "Law & Order?" I thought there wasn't, until I saw last week's episode of "Law & Order: SVU," that focused entirely on Nigerian Christian polygamist legal immigrants who had been religiously and politically oppressed in their own country. That's quite the niche market there.
Anyway...
We walked for a long time. I think one of my toes fell off. "I Left My Toe in New York City" doesn't have the same ring as that song Tony Bennett sang about his heart and San Francisco. But along the way, we passed a building with a line wrapped around it.
"Why is there a line there?" Sean asked me.
"I don't know. It's New York. People think there's stuff worth lining up for," I said, irritably.
And two or three hundred more blocks later, we were there.
"Tada!" I waved wildly with my hands. "The Empire State Building! Let's go."
But they marveled at the glossy exterior, the intricate scrollwork and the sheer immensity of it.
"Wow. Nothing like this in Atlanta," Marvin said.
"What?! There's all kinds of stuff like this in Atlanta, if by 'this' you mean tall construction-type objects," I grouched.
"Well, it's different when you're actually here," Sean snapped at me. And deservedly.
"You mean here as in outside in the cold winter looking at the base and not even the front door of a building we can't get into because we have no reason to he here?" I asked. Did I mention that I was voted Miss Congeniality on the trip? I think it was the aftereffects of all the booze in the limo. Hells, yeah, we took a limo from the airport to the hotel. We're pimps like dat.
But Jennifer, always the sensible one, was pointing at a plaque a few dozen feet above us.
"Uh, why does that say Chrysler Building?" she asked.

Holy shit. My whole life I had them confused.

Somehow, that was an even longer walk back to the hotel than it was to the Chrysler Building. And along the way, we passed that line of people again. Guess where they were.

Yep. The Empire State Building.
















L-R: Empire State Building and Chrysler Building from afar.








L-R: Empire State Building and Chrysler Building from the base.