#NewYorkValues or ‘We Have Money’
The recent controversy over Ted Cruz’s “New York Values” comment has me thinking about my views of the Big Apple as an Ohioan.
Growing up in the Midwest in the 1980s, I imagined New York City as a dangerous place to live. This was before the crime crackdown and Times Square clean-up. The movies and television shows I watched as a kid made it seem like NYC was a gangland compared to my small Ohio town.
I remember a sketch from Saturday Night Live that was introduced from the news set with the intro, “A person in New York City is robbed every 11 seconds, and we now introduce you to that man.”
In the sketch, Jim Belushi is being interviewed and is constantly mugged and can barely finish a sentence. While purely satire that was the way I envisioned the Big Apple.
As an adult, I have now made multiple trips to NYC. I’ve learned that New York is one of the greatest cities anywhere — and the people there have more values in common with the Midwest than not.
It was a subway ride years ago that I remember as being one of the incidents where my childhood vision of New York came flooding back, where I instantly panicked — even though there wasn’t a need to be afraid.
It was my daughter’s first time in the Big Apple. She was just under 5-years-old and we were enjoying holiday sights and sounds of the city. Decorated store windows, visits to the Macy’s Santa, her first trip out to see the Statue of Liberty and other typical tourist activities were part of the trip.
My wife and I decided to take Audrey downtown. Along the way we got to stop for pizza, cupcakes, and shopping. (Well, my wife mostly shopped while I took Audrey to some of the small playgrounds in the area). It was the subway trip back that our cover as Ohioans was blown.
We grabbed our seat in a subway car headed uptown. After we sat down, a homeless man walked into the car and made a pitch for a donation. He told everyone he was down on his luck and hoped we could help. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen it happen. It was the first time my daughter had seen it.
“What’s that man want?” she whispered.
“It’s ok, honey, he just wants money?” I whispered back, thinking that would end the conversation.
But with no hesitation, my daughter announced at the top of her lungs for the entire subway car to hear:
“WE HAVE MONEY!”
All eyes turned toward us. I smiled awkwardly at my wife and the rest of the people staring. Looking down and hugging Audrey I whispered back to her.
“No honey, we don’t. We don’t have annnnyyyyyy money.”
Everyone on the train knew we were tourists, and apparently, tourists with money. Suddenly, in my mind, every person on that subway car became an armed robber. They were all after us.
But in reality most of them were probably laughing to themselves, and no one gave us a second thought when they reached their stop.
The man who was asking for money now made his way from person-to-person with his hat out. He stood in front of me. He waited. I refused to make eye contact. Eventually, he walked to the next car. In hindsight, I probably should have given him something since he knew “we had money.”
Bottom line, the people in that subway car were not any different than the people riding a bus in Ohio. We all have values and they may not be the same as the person next to you, whether you’re in the Buckeye State or in the Big Apple.
Recently, I had the pleasure of taking my parents to New York for their 50th wedding anniversary. They had never been there. In fact, they said they wouldn’t want to go unless we were there to show them around. I think they still harbored some of those fears of New Yorkers, but after the trip, my mom and dad both said the same thing — We should have visited New York years ago.
My parents will never share “New York Values” as Cruz described them — but after meeting and talking to New Yorkers, they have an understanding and respect for the people that live there. To me, that’s the value that matters.
