When Bill and I travel to New York City as we regularly do, we play a game I made up called NYC Bingo. We’re big into made up games around here, or at least I am while the rest of the gang tolerates happily participates in them. NYC Bingo joins a panoply of dinner table pastimes such as “Sciency Science” (describe something that sounds like real science but isn’t at all), Quiz Night, an impromptu kid’s level trivia contest where the rules and categories are constantly in flux depending on who needs to win the most that day, and not to be confused with Quiz Time, a competing game that blew up the whole under-11 trivia set when it debuted during an unfortunate streak of bad luck for one contestant on Quiz Night.

We also have Dating App Flex (what is something that someone would put on a dating profile that sounds way more impressive than it is), and Generic Flex (something that sounds real but means nothing). I am especially proud of both Junior Gormans continuing the tradition in far more respectable ways: Junior Gorman the Younger is the creator of English Challenge (the rules are not mine to share but trust me it kicks ass), and Junior Gorman the Elder has been a trivia master at various haunts on the upper east side for the past four years.

How NYC Bingo works is this: one of us will pick 5 experiences unique to the city of cities, and then we tick them off our virtual bingo card.

The most recent categories of NYC Bingo were :
~Hear a language you do not recognize
~Hear a language you do
~Hear someone yell “FUCK YOU” as part of/a complete sentence
~Get yelled at (with or without obscenities)
~See a rat

There is no limit to how many categories you create, but you must only play one round of five at a time. Newer versions will of course include bonus points awarded for seeing more than one rat at a time, and possibly “Get stuck in traffic on the GW Bridge,” but that just feels like a free space category honestly.

Notably, you do not have to be with your traveling companion(s) to play. So, one of you could be at a meeting when they receive a text from the other person who is say, at The Tenement Museum visitor center waiting for their tour to start, that says someone is outside screaming fuck you you fucking fuck get the fuck out of the sidewalk. For example.

Here’s the thing about NYC Bingo. It’s meant to be fun and silly, but it could also be considered a little trite. It deals with surface views and stereotypes of life in the city, and only reflects the experience of being a visitor there. Would it be fun to keep track of how many rats I saw daily if I actually lived there (with all due respect paid to the Rat Czar of course)? I think not. Have I ever actually gotten yelled at in NYC, ever? No. Because I am a visitor, you can see me coming a block away of course, and that assumes anyone actually clocks my presence at all, which they don’t. Unless I’m in someone’s way, which I try not to be, but then the energy summoned for a reaction to that is probably not even worth the expended effort. So maybe that category should be retired altogether, substituted for something like “Made accidental eye contact on the subway.”

The point is, there are rules and mores involved with being a New Yorker and I don’t know them. I want to, I want to be a person who does more than sense what life is like for the millions of people who live there (and as an intuitive empath believe me that uses up most of my battery life) but there is a reason why I live in a very quiet part of Maine where my backyard is literally a forest.

Really, I cannot handle that kind of population density more for than a couple of days. I feel all sorts of feelings upon returning home, relief, joy, and a little sadness for sure, but especially this time I experienced a very different vibe there, one that bears mentioning, because it defies the biggest-of-all stereotype of New Yorkers…which is that they are brusque. In a rush. Walled off.

What I experienced happened over and over. People are getting connected to one another there, in so many ways. People are walking more slowly, chatting with each other in neighborhood coffee cafès, easily choosing kindness and gentleness first with each other in all the ways we as humans naturally form communities of authenticity small and large. Cutting each other some slack. It is miraculous and amazing and I observed the energy of generosity and tenacity and empathy manifesting all over the place.

I once heard someone say that New Yorkers are kind but not nice. I laughed so hard, because I’ve experienced that a lot.

But now I think they are also nice.

So let me share with you a better NYC Bingo card from our visit:

~have the best meal you’ve ever eaten at Tatiana, with your favorite people in the world, one of whom works there (!) where Chef Kwame is literally changing fine dining into something realer, full of life force and so beautiful and fun

~visit the Tenement Museum where space is held for the vibrant memories of the millions of people who moved through the Lower East Side after arriving from all over the world in wave after wave of immigration, which makes our country as great as it is

~meet a distant cousin at the Union Street Holiday Market “by accident” (Bill)

~share your fries from said market with a stranger and get offered a beer, share a laugh

~receive an extra free shot of coffee even when you insist on paying for it

~dog spot until your heart is full, in part because you take the risk of talking to their humans too.

~notice people smiling and making eye contact with you everywhere, accidentally on purpose, or even just because it’s ok. Maybe. I mean come on, dude, this is fucking New York.

BINGO.

Love,
Susan