Mother’s Trust
Long before the term “play date” entered into the collective vocabulary, I was an eclectic young man growing up in the rough and tumble neighborhoods of Bayonne, New Jersey, playing classical guitar during my freshman and sophomore stint in Bayonne High School. One day, my teacher instructed me to get a particular book of sheet music that as far as he knew, could only be purchased at a little shop inside the lobby of one of the old hotels in Times Square.
Keep in mind that this was the Times Square of the early 80s; rich in all the seemingly dangerous street culture depicted in films from that era. I informed my mother of the task at hand and she in turn said that I could take the local bus to Journal Square, in Jersey City, and from there the NYC bus to Times Square and pick up the book on my own. We had taken that route to midtown Manhattan a number of times together, so this was not uncharted territory. However, I was surprised by her comment, because I was only 13 years old. With the money for the book and the transit fare and some extra dollars of my own (just in case), I embarked on my little adventure the following Saturday morning—piece of cake I thought. Mother trusted me to pull this off without a hitch, so that’s exactly what I was going to do. When I eventually surfaced from the Port Authority Bus Terminal on 42nd Street and 8th Avenue, I became the master of my universe as I strutted over to the music shop.
Times Square seemed even larger than life on this first of what eventually led to numerous parent-less journeys to a variety of New York City neighborhoods. I was a pinball wizard in my youth, so with the sheet music in hand, it was time to hit as many arcades as I could on the way back to the bus terminal. I made it home without a scratch.
This may seem fairly unconventional to the modern-day suburban parent, but an important seed was planted in my mind on that day—that I could trust myself to conquer the unknown or never-done with relative ease. My little adventure instilled in me a can-do attitude that’s still alive and well, except for the times when my logical mind gets in the way to complicate matters. Fear is the ultimate thief. It robs us of the glory of what could be, as opposed to that which we already know—the mundane, everyday patterns in which we all engage.
I challenge first myself and then all of you to take a small risk this month and do something that you’ve wanted to do for perhaps quite a while, but haven’t been able to get past that hurdle of the first step. Let’s do this together. Create that piece of art. Enroll in that course. Engage in a conversation with that attractive guy or girl in your yoga class, but stay away from Times Square, for it has lost of all of its intriguing street culture that once tickled this young boy’s senses.
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