MOST mornings my daughter Ava and I easily navigate the path across and down Manhattan to her middle school. This morning was not most mornings.
There was the bus driver who chose to block 35th Street between 1st and 2nd Avenues. Followed by the congestion of every car on 1st Avenue trying to take 37th Street instead. And the dead eyes of the bored, white city worker who pulled over every vehicle that did so—because someone at City Hall decided this morning that it’s now illegal to turn onto 37th Street from 1st Ave. Or use the right lane. Or something. The nature of the crime wasn’t clear.
The street was filled with cars that had been pulled over, and drivers who had exited their vehicles and were standing around in the cold, awaiting punishment of some kind. Most were people of color. After five minutes, we apologetically paid our cab driver, even though he hadn’t really taken us anywhere, and sprinted across to 2nd Avenue, hoping to beat the late bell of Ava’s school, two miles downtown from and west of us. We had eight minutes to get there.
“This is a little adventure,” I said to Ava, as we stepped into a fresh cab.
“Not to the driver,” Ava said sadly, looking back.
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