We dropped the car at the commuter lot (although Molloy wanted to take the train to the train) and went into New York City for lunch. I spent the entire time on the platform scared to death that either one of them would get too close to the edge and I spent the entire time in the city scared to death either one of them would leave my sight amongst the trampling herds of humans. My only quiet time was on the train while watching them stare out the window like puppies.
Once we got to Grand Central Station we suffered the traffic via cab to Chinatown. New York City is a very strange place to me. It is made up of 8 million people who at any given moment are either traveling uptown, traveling downtown, or traveling across town. Either way, no one is standing still.
We bailed out in the heart of Chinatown and Lev chose a restaurant for us. From street level we took an escalator up what seemed like three floors to a room as large as a convention center. It was well attended which always provides confidence of a good choice. Scores of little Chinese women pushed food carts between the tables trying to pawn dumplings, noodles, soups, and other delicacies off on the patrons...as I reflect, it wasn't much different than being outside in New York City.
We selected various dumplings and noodles and engaged in the contact sport of chopstick-usage. Let's talk about chopsticks; I get that 10,000 years ago, before human brains developed far enough along to conceptualize the iPod, that someone in the Far East might have had at least some sense of manners to stop eating food with their hands, pick up two twigs and figure out how to lift a grain of rice. But now that we have a better understanding of metals, ergonomics, and iPods, I would think that Asians could have now evolved to using the more efficient fork or spoon. I'm not saying they have to catch all the way up to us spork-using Americans, but at least acknowledge the stick-thing is passe.
Lev, being as well-trained at table manners as he is, didn't want to put his chopsticks into the serving bowl and asked for serving chopsticks. And why not?
From Chinatown, we taxied back uptown to Barnes & Noble where the kids bought books with gift cards they received at the holidays. A walk back to Grand Central and another hour on the train staring into people's backyards, and we were home for dinner.
