When Scotlyn turned seven years old, she was an American Girl fanatic. I decided a trip to NYC was just the ticket. I had already taken Chad once when he was studying the Brooklyn bridge and how it was built, so now it was her turn to indulge her passion. I was forever indebted to AG too, as it finally gave her a passion to read after I had tried, unsuccessfully, to drag her kicking and screaming into a love of fiction wonderland since she was a young tot. She thought Felicity was the most heroic of all heroes ever in the world. She was way cooler than my childhood hero, that stupid Superman. All he could do was leap buildings in a single bound and defeat the evil Lex Luther. Felicity could single-handedly change the course of the American Revolution!
So, for her birthday, she wanted to have an old fashioned high tea with her very own Felicity doll. Her grandmothers sent me money ahead of time, and I pooled it with ours, and we set out at the butt-crack of dawn to make the 220 mile drive to The City. (We were living in Massachuetts at the time. We live a wee bit further from NYC than 220 miles now, thank the good Lord above.) Anyway, in my advanced wisdom, I decided it would be a better use of my time to drive into the city and park than to use the metro. After all, no one in New York drives, so we'll just swing right in, park in front of American Girl, have our tea time, hit Tiffany's and drive home lickety-split. No problemo.
Yeah. So. We got there after a five hour wait in a parking lot some genius named The Expressway. We paid $35 for parking in a garage that slid our car in an elevator and lifted into a slot while Scotlyn cried that we would never see it again. And this was after we were rear ended once and flipped off no less than five times for stopping in crosswalks. Well, I didn't KNOW!
We got to AG in time to stand in line twenty deep to buy an $80 Felicity doll as her gift with only minutes left until our tea time guaranteed to relax even the most stressed executive. I tell you what, no executive had anything on me about then. When we got to the front lines, I mean the front of the line, we ordered our doll, and the salesperson from you know where did her pitch about how we really needed the accessories of additional outfits and of course, Penny the horse.
Scotlyn being the horse crazy little girl that was, and still is, looked at me with beseeching eyes and I knew it was no use. I broke out the credit card that was for extreme emergency use only, like life and death, car broken down 1000 miles from home kind of emergency. I was strong and resisted the outfits, but she did walk away with the shiny red horse.
We got to the cafe and Felicity was given a seat of honor in her very own specially sized chair and her own cup and saucer. We were fed a delicious meal of filling cucumber sandwiches and tiny cups of tea, for the bargain price of $35....per person. They didn't charge for Felicity, which was quite big of them, wasn't it?
After our tea, we walked along Fifth Avenue and took in the sights while carrying Felicity, the boxed Penny, and our other myriad souveniers. We saw a lovely cathedral with intricate frescoes, but Scotlyn wasn't overly impressed. Both of us were most impressed when we happened upon a McDonalds, where we were able to eat actual food, and for less than $35.
We found our car, it only took us 6 hours to get through The Expressway, and the memories will carry us a lifetime. Scotlyn still talks about her special trip, and Peter and I are still paying for it.
No comments:
Post a Comment