City Love(34)

“Young lady!” he boomed. “I am more than capable of picking up my own mail!”

I was mortified. Getting yelled at bothered me for weeks. I still feel bad when I think about it.

Then there was the time in the lounge when a lady spilled coffee all over a side table. The coffee was seeping into a pile of magazines. I ran over with paper towels, but she stopped me.

“Here.” She gestured for the paper towels. “I can do it.”

“Oh, it’s no problem—”

She shook her head, wildly waving her hands for the paper towels. “I don’t need to be cleaned up after. I’m not a child.” She was so exasperated with me I almost burst out crying. And that was in a confined environment. These are the streets of New York City, rampant with weirdos. What if I try to help an old lady open a door or a blind person cross the street who’s bothered by people approaching them all the time when they just want to be left alone?

There has to be a way to help without worrying about possibly annoying people. Most people want help. A few people going ballistic on me will be worth helping hundreds of others. I also want to do more volunteer work here. There are tons of opportunities in this city. I scoped out some possibilities on Do Something before I moved. But for now, I can pick up this guy’s receipt.

“Would you hold my place?” I ask the lady in line behind me. She nods. I run over and pick up the receipt, then tap the guy on the back right before he reaches the door. “Excuse me. I think you dropped this.”

He turns around, clearly surprised that someone cared enough to run after him with what might have been trash.

“Thanks,” he says. He takes the receipt and leaves. It’s impossible to tell if he meant to drop it. But at least he has it now in case it was important.

Everyone stares at me as I walk back to the line. My face flushes with the unwanted attention and a rush of adrenaline from helping him. Let them stare. I’m the one who actually cared enough to take action.

By the time I leave the post office and dart down to the Come Out and Play Festival, Mica is already waiting for me. Come Out and Play is an annual festival of original large-scale games that takes place in a few different locations around the city. Tonight is the After Dark part of the festival at South Street Seaport. When I apologize for being late, Mica brushes me off.

“Don’t even worry about it,” she says. “It’s like at that camp party when I wanted to come over and say hi but those yammering girls were holding me hostage. Sometimes breaking away is impossible.”

“Thanks for inviting me to this. It sounds super fun.”

“Welcome to New York, where you can be into the most obscure activity and find a group just as obsessed as you are.”

“I didn’t even know groups like this were real.”

“Oh, we’re real. We’re very real.”

“You guys are definitely making up for that heinous post office line.”

“You should join Improv Everywhere. Have you heard of them?”

“They sound familiar.”

“They’re an improv group that organizes flash mobs and hilarious pranks. One time a group went into Best Buy all wearing blue polo shirts and khaki pants like the employees wear. The manager called the police and everything. Or they’ll do smaller skits like re-creating Back to the Future near the MetLife clock tower.”

“Have you done any of them?”

“Only two so far. About two hundred of us busted out choreo in Union Square.”

“Do you get together to practice before?”

“No, the instructional video is posted a week before the event. You have to practice yourself. Which makes the flash mob even cooler because you get to see it all come together for the first and only time. Before that we did Grand Central Station. There were a bunch of us spread out in the crowd. We blended in with everyone else, doing what they were doing. And then on cue we all froze for thirty-second intervals. It was brilliant. You should check out the video.”

New York is now officially even cooler. Where else could you find all these groups of stone-cold weirdos doing their thing? These kinds of weirdos are my people. Not like the weirdos D warned me about.

Aaaaand he’s in my head again.

Get out of my head, Wall Street Guy. You’re not wanted here.

The game descriptions for Come Out and Play are listed on a big standing chalkboard. Mica and I peruse our options. There’s Super Bacon Grab 2: Return of the Bacon. Which actually has nothing to do with bacon. It’s an apocalyptic survival game. As Mica and I are not fans of dystopian role playing, we rule that one out. Night Games sounds really interesting. It’s an immersive sound and light environment created by the players. As players move in a group, the 3D sound changes to create microenvironments based on their interaction. You can invent your own game or just have fun influencing the sound and light. Mica and I decide to start with the large-scale Frogger game. Each player holds a sign printed with one graphic from the original Frogger. Whoever is playing the frog has to latch onto safe graphics, jumping across four rows of moving players until they reach the other side of the river. These games aren’t so much about winning. They’re more about having fun. Which is why I’m already in love with Come Out and Play.

Mica and I get in line for the next Frogger game. We both choose to be logs so we can help whoever’s the frog get across the river. While we’re watching the group currently in play, a girl who looks like she’s in middle school trips and falls, going down hard on her knee.