Two Fears Converge

I used to go to an evening ice skating session at Sky Rink in Manhattan when it really was in the sky. Okay, I think it was on the tenth floor but for an ice skating rink that was pretty high. The rink has since moved to Chelsea Piers and, I believe, out of the sky. I don't really know. I have never been there. But that is not my point here which is to tell how two of my fears converged going home from Sky Rink to my apartment on West 85th Street one night.

First, my fears.

As a younger adult I was afraid of teenagers. Not that they would necessarily hurt me physically--although I guess that was a possibility--but more that they would somehow demean me. 

It was not so much a Lord of the Flies fear as much as a Mean Girls apprehension.

I'd never been in a public high school during school hours. I remember being terrified going to a Southern California high school on business. Walking onto that campus I felt not like a mature business woman but like a transfer student from Dorktown USA. A ridiculous emotion but it was mine. 

I also had a fear of a block in my neighborhood at least at night when it would be deserted. If there was any housing it was crammed between some commercial enterprises that were closed at night. The other side of the street was mostly school yard. It was the kind of block--I believe in some cases the actual block--where a fair number of bodies were found on early seasons of Law and Order.

I told myself never to get off at that stop on the way home from ice skating. It would be close to 11pm. I told myself to stay on the bus until Eighty-sixth street which would be busy. I never listen to myself. Maybe I told myself no one would mess with a woman carrying two sharp blades not to mention toe picks. 

So I got off the bus and started down the dark and empty block. And there they were. Three teenagers walking towards me. Three teenagers who noticed me. I could tell. As they grew closer, I grew more apprehensive. One of the males was eyeing me. Then it happened. Just like I knew it would. He spoke.

"Woody Allen plays the clarinet doesn't he?"

As I told them, he does.