When I left New York City nearly 8 months ago, I drove off with a bad taste in my mouth. My car was filled with only 3 quarters of what I had packed for my big move out--but only because 1.4 of my belongings had been stolen the night prior. I summarized that final night in NYC in my blog post: Just not a material girl in a material world .
Saturday night, as my best friends and I headed out for a night in Manhattan, we didn't make it very far. In fact, we made it up about three steps before my best friend's clutch was ripped from her hands, and the young kid, who could have been no older than 15 ran off with it.
As I turned around, I stumbled over the words "What the hell happened?" My friends were watching as the punk and his friends ran off. Too angry, or too lost for words, we all kind of looked at one another. "Damn."
My best friend is a lot like me when it comes to personal belongings. If they disappear, we can replace them. Really, it's the time that has been stolen from us. Like me, my best friend avoids materialism, mutters under her breath how it sucks--but how nothing can be done, but move on. It's probably why we make such great best friends. We will never care more about our belongings than the people we are with and the people we care about. If we had to live with nothing, but our family and our friends, on the side of a street...we'd be just fine. And I honestly mean that. I am not sure how many other people can say that.
Despite, wanting to just let it go, we were forced to ride around in cop cars to attempt to identify the boys who ran off with the stuff. With each cop we encountered, we felt like we were actually the ones being interrogated:
Well...Why are you up here? Why would you ever live in this area? What the hell are you doing up here?
One female cop went as far as to say "I have a gun and I wouldn't even walk down that street."
My best friend looked at them like they had ten heads. And finally said to the one,
"The Bronx is a great place."
It is because of my best friend that I was able to avoid materialism just eight months ago--it is because of my friend that the bitter taste in my mouth from the moment I saw the smashed window of my car, literally only lasted seconds...it is because of her faith and her belief in people and actions, that I am such a caring and forgiving person--that I see the good before I see the bad. That I state, "Maybe they needed the money more than I did," when trying to make up for feeling violated and insecure in a city that has done me right so many times.
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A couple days later the sweet, sugary, savory feeling of love for New York City has returned to my taste buds in full.
As my phone lit up from across the table, I could just read the name of who it was from. "Laura Cell."
"But her phone was stolen," I thought to myself.
"I got my stuff back! everything except money and metro card!"
And in that moment, I smiled. I smiled knowing that my best friend's attitude, that has rubbed off so wonderfully on me, was just one of the many reasons her stuff came back to her in a very unconventional way. And despite the fact that we may never know the person who ran off with her stuff to begin with--it doesn't matter. What matters is that no matter how much bad there is in this world--no matter how much crime, no matter what the statistics are--people are still good at heart...this world is still good.
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