Amongst the villagers

my day
Everybody has a story.
Tonight I'm coming around the corner of the stairs when I hear the guy telling the guy just ahead of me his story. This one's about how he can't figure out what's wrong with his metroCARD, that he just put ten dollars on it but now it doesn't work and he needs to send it in to be fixed but right now he has to get downtown to see his mother. So if you just have just a dollar to help him with the fare. ....... ,
About a hundred yards from this cadger's spot, on the way up the hill this morning, I met a runner coming down the hill saying "Yes,yes ,Yes!!" with a nice hard hiss on the last yes. There was some victory in his story, a finish worthy of this bright Sunday.

Meanwhile, across town on First Avenue the crowds were gathering to cheer and cowbell the runners of the marathon. I watched for a while. Brimming.
I saw Paula go by. Running so fast and ten, no, twelve women hanging onto her heels. ah
Then went to work.
There were the usual.
Paint. Hanging Pictures. Holes to be made or filled.
A knife sharpener. An LED flashlight.
Late, a woman came in. She'd been cleaning the floors in her father's apartment when she made the mistake of plugging the floor cleaner into the same socket as her father's heater.
Something blew.
Now the heater was off and his hospital bed was inoperable.
She cried on the phone to her husband who was somewhere.
We explained how to re-set the breakers.
She was brave.
She was tired.
She was afraid that she had killed her father.
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At five forty five I reached the Park from the 6 train. The cops were all standing around and the barriers had all been taken down. Here we were seven hours since the start. Paula had long been the winner and was probably having dinner somewhere.
Then, I saw them, not in a bunch but singled up. One just up there, then a couple trotting slowly together.
Forty people I'd say I saw in the two miles to to the 23 mile turn into the Park.
Forty finishers all on their way to their yes yes yes moment.
Two blind runners and their guides.
An ancient man closely accompanied by a younger woman.
A man with one leg and one very badly malfunctioning apparatus.
A weeping woman and a man with a prosthesis at the 25 mile banner.
One really old man all by himself in the darkness.
A big woman with a backpack pacing along as if it were noon.

They were two miles and two tenths from the end and their story, their yes yes yes moment.

Joe(I hope you all had your moment today)Nation