FRESHMEN FOR ALL

One of the great things about living in New York is that you get to rub up against so many different types of people on a daily basis. And I don’t mean that sexually, I mean as you wander from here to there on foot, or subway, buses and cabs you always hear things, or talk to people who are outside your daily world and often they bring with them the gifts of knowledge and glimpses of insights and worlds you would never know otherwise.

This doesn’t happen in LA the where you drive from your car to your destination and then meet up with whoever is in your immediate world.

It’s what makes New York and special and the other thing one is constantly reminded of here is how many different people there are from all over the world, just doing their job and trying to grab a piece of the American Dream,which in spite of all the global and homegrown problems still exists. And when you find one of those – like I did today- it makes you happy to be both a New Yorker and an American.

I climbed in a cab this morning (I usually take subways but was carrying all the office gifts) and I had a cheery driver who I immediately started talking to. He was from somewhere on the subcontinent which because of my love of all things Indian or even close by always ignites me into an instant dialogue. My girls always tease me as they say I start talking with a faux Indian accent, but whatever– my heart is in the right place and I just want to gab.

So this gentlemen and I started talking about Hindi films and India and the fact he was from Bangladesh. He was wearing a scull cap so I picked up pretty quickly he was either Pakistani or Bangladeshi.

Somehow as often happens we got on to kids and the fact his were coming back from college this week. He was thrilled; one was a freshman, he missed her, she would be back for over a month.

“Where does she go?” I asked him. “Brown,” he said proudly, adding “My sophomore is at Columbia.”

Pretty darned impressive. I asked him about himself, his journey to this place where he is in America driving a cab with two kids in Ivy League schools. How did it happen?

He told me he came here as a student from Bangladesh, he was “very, very poor.”

And take it from me ,who has spent so much time in that part of the world, Bangladeshi poor is the poorest of the poor.

He ran out of money and eventually had to give up school. He wanted to learn but didn’t have the funds. He made a few attempts at business he said, a mini market in Orlando and working in some other form of retail, but he said they all went bust and he had to make money, so he drives a cab to “support his family.”

He drives from six am to eleven pm, long shift. He owns his cab.

He has a grin and an infectious glee that is hard to bottle. We couldn’t stop talking and I couldn’t stop telling him how impressed I was.

We talk a lot on this blog about families run amok, many are families with means.

In LUCKY DUCKS we explore why this happens.

I said, “You must be so proud. ” He said “I’m happy, I work hard and they won’t have the same struggles. As long as I can make their life better, mine is good.”

I love these stories for so many reasons, one is because I know so many rich, entitled people who have done everything humanly possible to get their kids into these schools and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t; so when I hear of two girls with no means (he gladly pays their room and board) who get in on their own merit it thrills me to death.

I also love these stories as they transcend religious boundaries; here we were, a Jew and a Muslim in 2009 jabbering away about our freshman.

Here he is a Muslim in America, not always easy these days; as we are quick to forget that most of world’s Muslims do not want to blow us up.

They are fathers and mothers and the lucky ones have kids waiting for their SAT scores. And the really lucky, hard workers have kids in the best schools in the country.

It shows that America despite all the problems on many levels works so well on so many others.

That people of all races and religions for the most part just want to do what is best for their families.

Jew or Gentile, Muslim or Buddhist, Cab Driver, screenwriter, store clerk or Hedge Fund manager, a freshman parent at xmas just can’t wait for their kid to come home.

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