Sylvia was sitting at a folding table on the West side of fashionable Abbott Kinney Blvd. on Saturday morning, where all the new couples were out shopping for fashionable things. By the looks of it, she was about 120. I was walking by, turkey-cranberry sandwich in hand, tired from walking most of Venice in search of a surf shop. She asked me if I had registered to vote.
Now, out-of-state college students have a programmed response for this sort of thing—“Sorry, I’m not a California resident”—but that’s not true any more, so I sat down and let her fill out the form for me. K as in, shit, what starts with K? A, M as in Mary, P as in Peter… it’s funny how I picked up Mary and Peter from listening to my Mom spell out our name on the phone. I certainly didn’t pick them up at bible study.
We talked about the New York Times, and how much better it is than some other papers. I was going to launch into a rant about the whole Times Select thing, but I stopped when I realized that she has probably never used the internet. Newspapers are a subtly different thing for my generation.
I told her to have a nice day, and I meant it. She frowned at me. “Don’t tell me to have a nice day,” she said. “Nobody means it when they say it. Say ‘take care’ instead. I’ve trained all of Brooklyn, the bus drivers… I take the bus everywhere—people on the street, everyone. Take care.” #