METROPOLITAN DIARY

More or Less
Dear Diary:

It was 1994, and I was living in the East Village. On my way home one day, I stopped at the Second Avenue Deli.

After waiting in line for a few minutes, I stepped up to the counter.

“One pound of chopped liver, please,” I said.

The counterman waved his hands dismissively as if batting the idea away.

“No, no, no,” he said. “That’s not the way to do it here. What I’ll do is I’ll make you a chopped liver sandwich, and that way you get more than a pound of chopped liver.”

“Otherwise,” he added, “I gotta charge you more for less. Makes no sense!”

“Oh, thank you,” I said. “But really, I just want a pound, and I’d like to get it in a plastic container.”

Before I finished speaking, though, he had unspooled a long sheet of white deli paper and loaded a thick slice of marble rye with a softball-size dollop of creamy, fresh chopped liver redolent of sweet garlic and raw onion.

When my request finally registered with him, he stopped and fixed me with a long, disappointed stare.

“Look,” he said, “what’s the problem? I make you a nice chopped liver sandwich, you take the sandwich home, you unwrap the sandwich, you throw away the bread! What’s the problem?”

I conceded that it sounded like an excellent course of action.

— John Berlind

Instrumental
Dear Diary:

After a long Saturday teaching lessons at Manhattan School of Music, I rushed down to Penn Station to catch an Amtrak train home at the last minute.

It was full to bursting as I got on.

“Is that a viola?” a red-capped conductor asked.

I was impressed.

Yes, I said. The instrument I was carrying on my back was indeed a viola.

“I’m a bassoonist,” he said. “We have two Juilliard grads working this train.”

— Sheila Browne

Deep Question
Dear Diary:

I was shopping for a Christmas tree on Second Avenue and 20th Street. As I approached the line of trees, I noticed two huts nearby.

One was clearly marked “SoHo Trees.” The other one was unmarked, and there was a man standing in front of it with bags of basil.

“Excuse me,” I said. “Are you connected to the trees?”

“Spiritually?” he replied.

— Amy Morrison

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/22/nyregion/metropolitan-diary.html