Last year, my daughter and I took the train to 81st Street so we could watch the parade floats line up for their star turn in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. It was a blustery day, and rumor had it that the winds were so strong that the parade might be canceled.
I asked an official from the helium supply company who was standing with her walkie talkie near Snoopy. She laughed.
“In ninety years, this parade has never been canceled. You think a little high wind is going to stop New York City?”
No, I didn’t.
I scooped up my toddler and we headed to Columbus Avenue in pursuit of some big floats on the south side of the Museum of Natural History.
“Excuse me? Is that your daughter?” I heard a Texan- twanged voice call after us as we skipped down the wet sidewalk.
“She is just the cutest thing.”
“Thank you,” I said.
Then the stranger spoke in a confidential tone.
“You know, I have been TERRIFIED of visiting New York City for years. You hear so many things. The crime, the nasty people, the dirt… but we haven’t experienced that at all. I’m sorry I waited all these years!”
I felt proud of New York City. It isn’t all sunshine and roses, but it’s hardly the dystopian nightmare that many people from other towns think it is. I told her we had been quite happy raising our young child here, and before that, going to college here, being a married couple here, grocery shopping all these years here on this small island.
My daughter ran off to stick her upturned face toward a stream of water running of a building.
The Texan cooed and we waved goodbye. I was proud of our fair city.
People are nice here.
Eleven months later, a man in Central Park threatened to put a cigarette out in my face.
It was my husband’s birthday, and we had decided to engage in the utmost of touristy adventures: a boat ride on the Lake. We entered the park at Strawberry Fields.
It happened at the Imagine monument, known for its hippy, peaceful guitar-playing in-memory of vibe. Roses are scattered daily at John Lennon’s memorial.
A group of men in their sixties, hacking and blowing ashy fumes into the cool fall breeze, surrounded Lennon’s star.
I have asthma. I am also allergic to smoke.
One second-hand whiff enlarges the nodes in my throat, gives me a riotous headache, a wheezing cough and blurred vision.
But that isn’t the point. Those are my problems.
I walked up to one of the men and I told him very politely (I swear) about the law.
He looked like Santa Claus: white hair and scruff and red nose and twinkly blue eyes. I waited for a grandfatherly chuckle and a remark about bad habits and lack of knowledge of city ordinances. I knew it would be a lie, but it would be in the name of keeping the peace, and he would then put out the cigarette and the air would clear.
I knew it.
He told me he was aware of the law.
And then he did what antisocial creeps do best: he pretended I didn’t exist.
With my husband and daughter at a safe distance, I persisted.
He mocked me.
I told him I would call the police.
He told me to go ahead.
And then he stood up, very suddenly. Hundreds of people surrounded us. They stared.
He lunged at me with the glowing orange tip of his cigarette and said:
“How about I put it out in your face?”
His cigarette dangled an inch from my eye.
Don’t mess with a ballet dancer.
I may be just slightly over five feet. I may weigh less than 100 pounds. I may have wrestled with anemia and having-a-toddler-lack-of-sleep-blues for a year.
But I am a dancer.
Before I knew it, I swung my leg at his face, estimating my kick so that my foot would land an inch before his nose.
I never intended to touch him, and I didn’t.
I defended myself from an assault by demonstrating my ability to fight back.
No one moved, either to help me or him. My memory goes a bit hazy here, because I was afraid. I was messing with a criminal. It wasn’t prudent.
I was angry. I am sick of people smoking in an oasis. It’s my air, too.
I am certain most smokers don’t realize how much it affects other people when they smoke, even out of doors. But please believe me, smokers, it hurts like hell. My ears throb after one breath of putrid second-hand smoke.
Let me have the city parks to wander in while I breathe.
I think about that Texan who was ashamed to have believed all the rumors about New York being a den of delinquents. I remind myself it could have happened anywhere. But this isn’t the first run-in with smokers I have had in Central Park. Some are very apologetic. Some have shrugged sheepishly and told me I was right to tell my little kid to avoid smokers like the plague.
Still, there are many who will stare down a tiny woman with a baby on her hip and dare her to call the cops. You have to get really Lisbeth Salander on them before they put the cigarette out.
Even then, they will mutter degradations in a stage whisper.
This guy moved pretty fast after the karate chop. He and his friends called me a “slut” and a “lunatic” before leaving the park.
The onlookers stared.
My pulse fluttered and my heart throbbed.
Are New Yorkers less willing to act on behalf of a fellow citizen? Would anyone have stepped in if the man had lunged at me again?
The boat ride was lovely. We crossed paths with another smoker: a Swede and his grandkids. I told him about the law in New York City parks. He was surprised but immediately put out his ashy stick.
He smiled at me shyly from his row boat.
I smiled back.
Leslie Kendall Dye is an actor and dancer living in NYC. You can find her writing at hungrylittleanimal.blogspot.com.