You say „the city“ and expect everyone to know that this means Manhattan. You secretly envy cabbies for their driving skill. You have never been to the Statue of Liberty or the Empire State Building. You can get into a four-hour argument about how to get from Columbus Circle to Battery Park at 3:30 on the Friday before a long weekend, but can’t find Wisconsin on a map. The homeless are invisible. The subway makes sense. The subway should never be called anything prissy, like the Metro. You believe that being able to swear at people in their own language makes you multilingual. You think $7.00 to cross a bridge is a fair price. You’ve considered stabbing someone just for saying „The Big Apple“. Your door has more than three locks. You go to a hockey game for the fighting. In the stands. To participate. Your favorite movie has DeNiro in it. The most frequently used part of your car is the horn. You consider eye contact an act of overt aggression. You call an 8′ x 10′ plot of patchy grass a yard. You complain about having to mow it. You are a skee-ball juggernaut. You consider Westchester „Upstate“. You cried the day Ed Koch took over for Judge Wapner.
