New York City, or, Kenyon Relocated

Ed.: Just because Thanksgiving break was only a week long does not mean that you avoided experiencing some minor incidents. A quick transition to a big city from a quaint village can be chaotic. Check out Audrey Davis’s story of being off kilter in the Big Apple. 

My road trip home was supposed to start at approximately 8:50 a.m. That was when my train from Manhattan would reach Beacon, Ny., my dad would pick me up, and we’d be on our merry way. That is not what happened.

Instead, we left at 11:30. The night before I had somehow managed to leave all my personal belongings in my cousin’s dressing room at the Belasco Theater. (Side note: Go see Golden Boy on Broadway! My cousin’s in it!) My dad, instantly regretting his decision to let said cousin whisk me into the Big Apple for a trip-within-a-trip, spent what was supposed to be the beginning of our drive trying to find me in the city of over 8 million people.

Meanwhile, I had embarked on what can only be described as a weird and most certainly sexless walk of shame. I arrived back at the theater at 10:30 a.m. I called ahead to explain my situation and assure the theater staff that I wasn’t some rabid Monk fan trying break into Tony Shaloub’s dressing room (Golden Boy also stars Tony Shaloub of the acclaimed television hit Monk). The security guard looked on in amusement as I marched in and out of the theater still wearing my theater attire from the night before.

From there I proceeded to a coffee shop, where I tried to change my clothes and put on makeup in a unisex bathroom with a broken lock. I was walked in on twice. When I emerged from the bathroom sporting a completely different outfit and noticeably rosier cheeks, I imagined a man in the coffee shop leaning in to his out-of-town relatives and whispering, “That, my friends, is what we New Yorkers call a ‘homeless person.’” After that, I found my dad at the corner of 44th and 6th. The drive home was uneventful.