A New York Moment

It happened the other day. Okay, it happened a couple of weeks ago and it’s exactly the kind of thing I should come home and write about immediately. But instead I let it sit in my brain.
I was on a late-morning, let’s-get-ready-for-lunch run to Giacomo, my favorite deli. On West 72nd Street. And the lovely woman who makes the best sandwiches on the planet was there. She was bantering with a pal, a guy who was harassing her from near where I was standing. But harassing in a good, friendly way. She was telling him to get lost. Also in a good, friendly way.
They were talking about her background, her ethnic heritage. I had always assumed that she was Italian, given that she makes the best Italian sandwiches. But she said that since her school days she’s been known as 3P. She grew up in Puerto Rico, but she’s Palestinian and Panamanian.
Almost instantly, that struck me as so New York. All those different backgrounds coming together in one woman, who I think of as Italian.