D.M.V.

Dear Diary:

I was at the Department of Motor Vehicles in the Bronx, waiting to renew my driver’s license. The man at the head of the line was called to the clerk’s window.

Without looking up, the clerk instructed the man to read a line on the eye chart on the wall.

The man instinctively covered one eye and began to read.

The clerk looked up, and said, “What are you going to do, drive with one eye? Read with both of them.”

— Salvatore J. Pagliaro

Walking the Dog

Dear Diary:

I was in the West Village on a beautiful spring day, walking my 13-pound rescue mutt Charly and enjoying the first days of warm sun.

Coming down the block was a tall, muscular young man dressed in black leather. With him was an equally muscular big dog of unknown breed, also decked out in black leather, including a large leather collar with spikes, and on a chain link leash.

Because Charly is overly friendly with other dogs, I thought I should probably cross the street. Why risk a confrontation?

Then, just as we were about to cross the street, the man and his dog ducked into a garage.

“Phew,” I thought, as Charly and I continued down the block.

Passing the garage, I looked in and saw the young man. The dog was cowering behind him.

The young man looked at me sheepishly.

”He’s afraid of other dogs,” he said.

— Susan Pomerantz

Kicks

Dear Diary:

I was on the No. 1, hurrying to get to Times Square. The train got to the 96th Street station at almost the same time as a No. 2 express.

Another woman on the train and I exchanged glances acknowledging our good luck, sprinted across the platform and jumped onto the waiting train.

We laughed a bit and began to chat. She had a dancer’s posture, and her hair was in a bun at the top of her head in a style often favored by dancers. I asked whether she was a dancer.

She said that she wasn’t a professional dancer, but that she did like to tango.

I said I also loved to dance, and happily demonstrated a high kick.

She smiled a big smile.

“Let’s do some kicks!” she said.

And as the train moved along, we began to do high kicks in unison, one leg and then the other. We continued that way until we got to the Times Square station. When the train stopped, we gathered our stuff, thanked each other profusely and hurried off on our separate ways.

— Vivian Awner

Still In Touch

Dear Diary:

I left New York this year after living in the city my entire life. It took me nearly six months to update “home” on my GPS with my new, non-New York City address.

I’m still in denial that I left. I had signed up for Notify NYC text-message alerts during Hurricane Sandy and never turned them off. I would take comfort in the warnings when I felt especially homesick for the city after moving away. Messages about a snarled commute or some other crisis that would have heightened my anxiety when I lived in New York became sources of reassurance: I was still connected, still in the know.

I would hungrily await the ding of my phone to see what was unfolding: “Due to police activity, expect heavy traffic;” “Due to protest, all lanes of the West Side Highway are closed at 26th Street in both directions;” ”Due to an unstable building facade, 29th Street is closed between Sixth and Seventh Avenues.”

Once in a while, though, an alert would make me grateful that I’d left: “Due to signal problems, expect delays on 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, J, L, M, N, Q, R, S, W, and Z trains.”

— Allison Hope Kahn

Bay Ridge Bus

Dear Diary:

I got off the R at Bay Ridge Avenue and switched to the B9 bus. I was on my way to meet friends at a free concert.

The bus driver was very friendly. He greeted every passenger with a hearty “Good evening” before they had a chance to say anything.

When we got to the corner of Colonial Road and Bay Ridge Avenue — 69th Street to earlier generations — the driver left the front doors, and yelled into the pizzeria on the corner.

“Can you heat me up a spinach roll?” he shouted.

The man at the counter cocked his head to indicate that he hadn’t heard the request. The driver repeated it. Then he asked a teenage boy who was just getting off the bus to deliver the message.

The counterman flashed a thumbs-up.

“I’ll be back in 10 minutes,” the driver said.

It seemed like a pretty accurate estimate. We were near the end of the line.

— Veronica Shea

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Illustrations by Agnes Lee

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