Dear Diary:
I am a roach coach fiend. I get my morning corn muffin and iced coffee from one just outside my office on 34th and Park. At lunch, I walk one block away from my office and grab a chicken and rice platter with the special white sauce and everything on it. And after work around 6, right outside the Port Authority, before I make my way into the station for my bus commute home through the Lincoln Tunnel into Hoboken, I frequently grab a hot dog as a pre-snack dinner from a third food cart.
(My girlfriend gets mad at me if I eat before dinner on days she makes a big meal. But by the time I get home and dinner is finally ready, I feel like a starved boy. She interrogates me if I don’t eat a full dinner, and I must lie that I am having stomach problems. It’s the only time I lie to her.)
But it was on a recent walk to work one morning on the corner of 38th and Fifth that I noticed another food cart that really made my day.
On the side panel just below the container filled with pink-and-blue packets of processed sugar was a sign that read, “Take a Smile (They’re free),†with smiley-faced slips of paper to take. Next to it read another sign, “Take What You Need,†with slips of paper for “Passion, Courage, Strength, Motivation, Forgiveness†â€" other options were apparently already taken. Coincidentally, I had no pocket change and decided to take a smiley face.
“I feel it’s my role to bring hope to people,†said the soft-spoken merchant when I asked him why he put up the signs.
If only we all had such roles.
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