‘The Ingredients Looked Good, So I Told Him He Should Go for It’

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Hamburger Helper

Dear Diary:

One of my favorite spots in the city to get a bite is a gas station on Eighth Avenue. The gas is expensive, but the food is well worth the price.

On a recent visit, I found that the line was unusually long. As I waited, I began talking with another customer. He told me it was his first time there and that he was looking for recommendations.

I said I normally ordered the classic burger with no toppings but had heard good things about some of the other options.

“What about this one?” he asked, pointing at a limited-edition item listed on the menu.

I had never tried it, but the ingredients looked good, so I told him he should go for it.

“Are you going to get one too?” he asked as he stepped to the counter to pay.

I stopped to think about it. As a college student, my budget was tight, and the burger he was getting was double the price of the one I had planned to order.

“Sure,” I responded hesitantly. “Why not?”

He smiled, leaned toward the cashier and paid for both of our orders.

As I thanked him, I noticed that his ears were badly swollen. When I asked about them, he told me he was a professional fighter.

“I just wanted to help somebody out,” he said.

— Jack Bulik

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Under the Hood

Dear Diary:

I was returning from a free ear-acupuncture clinic on a balmy spring day a few years ago, leisurely walking along Fifth Street on my way to the East Village.

I was feeling relaxed, so relaxed that I when I passed a man in his 60s who had his tools spread out on the sidewalk and was working on a car that had definitely seen better days, I did something out of character: I stopped to talk to him.

We chatted for a little while about the repair he was making to the car’s engine, and I peeked in under the hood.

“But,” he said with a straight face, “you should see the body in the trunk.”

There was a moment of silence, and then we both laughed and I walked away.

— Bonnie Rosenstock

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Passing Through

Dear Diary:

I had had an emotionally dense week in Connecticut selling off my late father’s belongings to pay for his funeral. I was stopping in New York to see my sister and some high school friends before heading home to California.

I dragged two large duffel bags down the stairs of a subway station in Harlem, one filled with what had been treasures of my father’s and now belonged to me.

Seeing a train about to depart, I resigned myself to missing it. I had no idea how to navigate the turnstiles with all that luggage.

Just then, a younger guy kicked open the gate so I could pass.

I followed him onto the train, where he let his foot hang in the doorway to make sure I made it. He caught my nod of thanks, put in his earbuds and jammed away.

Many hours and pints with my friends later, I was standing on a different platform at 2 a.m., fueling up on coconut water and Doritos before retreating to my sister’s air mattress.

Two punk-looking guys crossed my path.

“Hey,” one of them said, “you look like you’d be a really good dad.”

Somehow, New York always knows what you need.

— Peter Mackell

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Jamaica Avenue Memories

Dear Diary:

Since moving away from St. Albans, Queens, many years ago, I have carted around an old wooden clothes hanger that I “inherited” from my grandparents.

It is stenciled with the name of a shop on Jamaica Avenue that closed long ago, B&B Clothing Store. Now that I live in the Midwest, it’s a quirky reminder of my New York City roots.

Recently, I met a woman from Oklahoma, another Queens transplant, and impulsively shared a photo of my hanger with her.

To my surprise, she had a picture of her own New York keepsake: an identical wooden hanger from the very same Jamaica Avenue store.

— Thomas Piché

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Cab Chatter

Dear Diary:

In 2015, my then-husband and I visited New York City for the first time.

After getting a cab at LaGuardia to go to our hotel, my husband, a loquacious sort, tried to chat up the driver about where he was from, how many fares he picked up in a day and so on.

The driver never answered with more than two or three words.

When we got out at our hotel, I tried to apologize for my husband’s extreme chattiness.

“Don’t worry madam,” the driver said. “Texans always talk too much. We never listen.”

— Nancy Burks

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Illustrations by Agnes Lee