'I Opened the Book App on My Tablet and Began Reading'

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April 14, 2024, 3:00 a.m. ET

Dear Diary:

I got on the last car of an uptown No. 1 train at Columbus Circle on a midweek evening. Squeezing into a seat next to a tall man, I opened the book app on my tablet and began reading where I had left off earlier.

“Are you reading ‘The Iliad’ on the subway?” the tall man asked in a tone of slight disbelief.

I said yes and explained that it was the Emily Wilson translation of Homer’s epic, which had recently been released to great acclaim.

“But how did you know what I was reading?” I asked.

“I saw a few of the names,” he said. “It couldn’t be anything else.”

“I’m a hopeless monoglot,” I told him. “Do you know it in the original?”

He nodded. “I had three years of Homer in graduate school.”

“Really? Do you have any left now?”

He cocked his head and quoted the opening lines, the ancient tongue sounding as smooth as flowing water.

I laughed out loud at the beauty of it, and at the unlikelihood of hearing ancient Greek spoken on the subway.

We exchanged a few other comments, and then I settled back in to read.

The man rose to leave at 110th Street.

“Thanks for reaffirming my love of Homer,” he said.

I couldn’t get my response out until he was halfway out of the car.

“Thanks for reaffirming my love for New York City,” I said.

— Gil Reavill

Dear Diary:

I was driving down Broadway and I stopped at a red light.

A sanitation truck pulled up next to me. The driver leaned out of the truck and pointed at the large hula dancer figurine on my dashboard.

“Hey,” he said. “That’s awesome.”

I yanked it off the dashboard and tossed it to him.

— Kevin O’Keefe

Dear Diary:

I was walking on Sixth Avenue in Midtown listening to music with my headphones on. The Talking Heads song “Heaven” was playing, and I was whistling along.

Suddenly, I thought I heard the lyrics coming from outside the headphones. Listening more carefully, I was sure I heard the lyrics coming from outside the headphones.

For a second, I thought I was losing my mind. Then I glanced to my right and noticed a man walking alongside me and singing. He had clearly recognized the song I was whistling and had joined in.

Seeing that I had noticed him singing along with me, he smiled and walked away.

— Joseph O’Sullivan

Dear Diary:

I was a girl going to summer camp for the first time. My mother, my sister and I boarded the train at Allerton Avenue in the Bronx to go to the drop-off point.

Getting on the train at the same time was a young, professional woman who, we learned, worked in pediatric recreation at Bellevue Hospital and adored children.

My new friend, Sadie Brown, had the magic touch. In no time at all, I was swinging my legs, jumping up and down and telling her my whole life story.

Later, I sent her a postcard from camp. She replied by sending me my first special delivery letter on beautiful, little-girl stationery. I have it to this day.

“I like children of all ages,” she wrote, “and your smile was so magnetic, I felt that I would like to get to know you.” She signed the letter, “Your Train Mate.” I was hooked.

From that day forward, Sadie and I remained faithful train mates until she died over 50 years later. She was my special friend, teacher and mentor through constant correspondence, phone calls and visits through the years.

I visited her in Florida the year before she died and wrote a memorial of our lifelong “train mate” friendship that was read at her funeral service.

“This is New York,” I can hear Sadie saying now. “You never know who you’ll sit next to on the train!”

— Fran Quittel

Dear Diary:

I was sitting near the front door at Barney Greengrass on Amsterdam Avenue near 86th Street. I was waiting for some colleagues I was meeting for breakfast.

Then the phone rang. A balding man who answered listened to the caller briefly and then shouted across the store to a white-haired man who was behind the opposite counter.

“How many slices in a cheesecake?” the balding man asked.

“As many as you want,” the white-haired man replied immediately. “It could be three! It could be 12! It could be 16!”

The balding man smiled and put the phone back near his mouth.

“Sixteen slices,” he said.

— Stuart Bernstein

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Illustrations by Agnes Lee

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