Celebrate Good TImes...C'mon!

I am in New York City at least once a month. I have family there, I have friends there, I have a lot of memories there. But I'm not quite sure I could ever live there.

There are a lot of reasons in favor of my someday moving to NYC. My brother and his wife live there and will probably always live close by. They just had a daughter, my niece Lena Rose, who I am determined to be close to both physically and emotionally for her entire childhood life. Two out of the four (only four!) schools that have the graduate program I am looking for are located in NYC. New York is close to my former home town in NJ. There's always something to do. There's always someone around. And many if not most of my friends will move here eventually.

And yet, I've never felt comfortable there. Any time my skirt is cut a bit short or my top a bit low I feel self-conscious. I feel like every man I pass is leering at me. And I've never felt like that in Boston. Sure, Boston has it's sketchy areas, many of which I've frequented over the course of my college education, but I've always felt the undeniable sense that Bostonians look out for one another. People will hold the door for you or come to your aid if you trip or let you take the first cab or stand up on the T so you can take their seat. Men, specifically, are not nearly as scary in Boston. Once in a while I'll get a whistle but a man would never grab at me just because he felt like it. And in fact, if that did happen in Boston, I'd bet hard cash that any nearby male witnesses would spring into action to defend the aforementioned damsel in distress.

I'm the kind of person that people are almost always nice to. It's a running joke in my family that I'm destined to marry a cab driver because about half the times I've taken a cab, the driver has professed his deepest darkest secrets to me and then bestowed upon me his "card" so that I can call him "day or night, whenever I need a ride." When I took a cab out of Brooklyn last night, my cab driver and I belted "Celebrate Good Times, C'Mon!" on the freeway at midnight. It was a hilariously typical moment for me. But despite my natural ability to dazzle strangers, people are not that nice to me in New York. When I smile at them, they don't always smile back. When I hold the door for them, they don't always make eye contact, let alone say thank you. I have the unsettling sense that New York City would crush my spirit. And I don't want that to happen. It's nice being nice.

Someday there may be no logical choice but to move to the city. At least I'll have a few more years in my hometown of choice to mentally prepare.