AN INCREDIBLY SHORT PRIMER

You must be conversational about professional sports. Here are some succinct descriptors:

The Jets are perpetual losers

              The Giants are always better than their record

              The Yankees must win the World Series or the season is a failure

              The Mets suck

              The Knicks are better than the Jets

              Nobody cares about the Nets

              The Rangers last won something called “The Cup” a hundred years ago

              The Devils play somewhere else

              The Islanders likewise play somewhere else, but nowhere near the Devils

              The area’s various soccer teams have names nobody remembers

A Few General Things to know:

              Instead of gifted and talented programs, everybody gets a trophy

              Nobody reads

              Adults do not return phone calls

              Everybody laments income inequality and buys the next new phone

              Everybody hates Facebook and uses it constantly

              A progressive is somebody who reaches into an affluent person’s wallet to retrieve money

              A conservative has a security guard for his wallet

              A moderate is conflicted: do I hire a security guard or do I voluntarily cough up my wallet

              Diversity = DEI = BIPOC = an increased number of African Americans being hired

              Immigration = Hispanic = Mexican = illegal

              N …. cannot be said or spelled out, unless you are African American, in which case it’s fine

If you are the contemplative sort, these are some interesting questions. What if —

              Moms spent as much time reading with their daughters as doing their hair and nails

              Dads spent as much time reading with their sons as working on the former’s car

              Big churches were open to the community seven days a week

              Playgrounds were unlocked sun up to sun down

              The 40 acres and a mule program had been implemented

              The number of workers fixing the roads was proportionate to the number of cones

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In time, probably faster than you expect, you will be adding multiple entries to the above list.

You might even have a thought or two about why you decided to move to the “Big Apple,” its nickname that involves some story about New Orleans.

Most significantly, you will come to realize that understanding New York City is not synonymous with knowing America, with all its greatness, warts, and beguiling unfilled promises.