Can you have your irony and eat it, too?

Despite my better judgment and the efforts of the Friendly Police Officer who visited my grade school in the mid-80s, I sometimes talk to strangers.

So I’m on the PATH train and the stranger to my left keeps leaning over me to get a better view of the newspaper that the stranger to my right is reading. The story is about the Yankees’ win over the Tigers in the first game of the ALDS. The stranger to my left says something out loud about it being a hell of a game, and I say something out loud about Jeter trying to suppress a smile after he hit his fifth. A conversation has begun.

Stranger tells me that he loves the Yankees and he loves New York. I seem like a nice girl, he says, but I’m nuts for living in New Jersey. Stranger is returning from his second or third venture into Jersey and, while the Garden State isn’t all bad, he sure doesn’t understand why anyone would want to live here when they could move across the river to New York.

I naively ask Stranger (whose shirt is wrinkled, hair is uncombed, and face is unshaven) what brought him to New Jersey. He says that he had a date last night. She was hot, and it went well. But there is no long-term relationship potential, Stranger tells me, because she is not a New Yorker.

Stranger has never wanted to live anywhere else but in New York. “I was born in New York, I went to school in New York, I work in New York, I live in New York,” he says. He vacations on Long Island. That’s as far away as he’s ever wanted to go, and as far away as he’s been.

I say, “It’s the Big Apple of your eye,” and I feel witty for a moment until I realize what a corny and dumb thing I’ve said.

I am okay in Stranger’s book because I at least have the good sense to WORK in New York. There are people, Stranger informs me, who have never even BEEN to New York. They live in other places throughout the country and the world, and they don’t know what they’re missing. “They don’t know much of anything, you know? They’ve never been anywhere, a lot of ‘em, except for whatever town they live in.” Stranger does not see the irony.

Stranger feels strongly that everyone should visit New York at some point in their lives. “Stop livin’ with your head up your @$$ and get yourself to the city and experience something” is the message Stranger wants to send to the people of the world.

Stranger and I have the same stop, and we walk together through the turnstiles and up the steps to the streets of – Finally! Stranger has been waiting all night! – New York.

“Nice talking to ya,” Stranger tells me, and we give each other a quick wave. He turns away from me and walks straight into a befuddled-looking guy who’s standing in the middle of the narrow sidewalk, oblivious to the fact that he’s disturbing the flow of pedestrian traffic.

“&*@%ing tourist,” says Stranger.