Hanging out with Golden Girl (most likely for the last time)

Chizz's college roommate freshman year has a daughter that attends NYU.  Frankly it was one of the many attractions of New York for us.  Really.  If we can't bother and annoy our own children, it is just as good, if not better, to bother and annoy the child of good friends.  Especially if she is too polite to tell you that you are bothering and annoying her.  And she is.  She has a particularly sunny outlook on life that I think she gets from her  mother.  (Sorry, Marky.)  Once she got past about 3 years old, I don't think I have really seen her in a bad mood.  She consistently has a smile on her face and seems always to be laughing.  So for those reasons and her penchant for certain colors, I have decided her pseudonym in this blog is going to be Golden Girl or GG for short.  It's perfect.

So a few weeks ago, I sent her a text suggesting we might get together for dinner or something.   See how cool I am?  Communicating electronically just like the kids?   No response from GG.  Perhaps she has learned to ignore me, just like my own children.  Then a few days later, I get a text from her inviting me to go to the Museum of the City of New York with her for a class assignment.  Yay!   Not knowing anything about the Museum, but knowing that I love museums and I love Golden Girl, I, of course, accept right away - within seconds.  By the way, it will give me a chance to corner her about not answering my text!  C'mon, just because I am not her actual parent, does not mean I pass up the opportunity to give her a little poke as if I were her parents.  Her parents would expect nothing less from me.

So we arrange a day and time to meet.  I am surprised how close the museum is to our apartment so I am able to walk, cutting through Central Park.  I always take the opportunity to walk through the park unless it is after dark.  Love the park, not stupid.  Her assignment is to look through 2 different exhibits, one is photos of police work in NYC around mostly people getting arrested or police men hanging out in the neighborhoods they patrol in the late 60s, early 70s.  It is notable to me for one thing, how the appearance of the police department is so different than today.  The uniformed officers of the 60s and 70s had long hair, mostly past their collars - not what you see today yet I would have said the 60s were more conservative then today.  And don't get me started on the facial hair, the handle bar moustaches, the long mutton chop side burns.  On the police!  After seeing that, I made a point to look at the uniformed officers today.  Almost all of them completely clean shaven and all of the ones I saw, hair cut well above their shirt collars.  Just an observation.

The second exhibit, and the primary part of her assignment, was an exhibit on the grid of New York City.  It details the initial city plan, its evolution, the changes made over the years.  There are maps,plans and charts, dozens and dozens of these old documents.  There are exhibits of the original plans, showing the properties owned by individuals that eventually became the borough of  Manhattan.  There are old photographs, which I find somewhat interesting.  I like looking at photos of places I have been and seeing the different changes.  But most of all there are maps.  After looking at these documents for some time, I ask GG which class had this assignment.  I was expecting to hear, history, anthropology, perhaps geography.  Nope.  Creative writing.  What?  After spending an afternoon looking at maps, plans and charts (did I mention how many there were?), I wasn't feeling very creative.  In fact it pretty much sucked every creative thought I had right out of me.  I haven't heard yet, what they had to write about in connection with this visit, but I am really curious.  It will take a lot of creativity from this instructor to find inspiration in those maps and have the kids write about it. 

I noticed the Museum also had an exhibit about Cecil Beaton.  This was right up my alley!   So I made GG trek on over to that gallery and we looked at some of his most famous photographs.  Cecil Beaton was a famous photographer, costume and stage designer.  He won Academy Awards for his work in Gigi and My Fair Lady.  He worked for Vanity Fair and Vogue.  It is hard to pick his most famous photograph.  Even people who don't know who he is have seen one of his photographs.  If you picture Greta Garbo in your head, it is most likely his photograph of her that is the image.  He worked with Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, Vivian Leigh, Charles Degaulle, Mick Jagger, the list goes on and on.  One of his most famous and familiar images is the wedding photo of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, after the abdication.   He actually did quite a bit of photography of the English royal family.  One of his portraits of Elizabeth II eventually became a stamp.  That would be pretty cool on the resume.  So we looked at lots of his photos, read a bit about his other works and anecdotes.  He was known as a quick wit.  Right after Elizabeth had taken the throne as quite a young girl, not known for her "wow" factor, he was asked what she could do to help the British fashion industry at home and abroad.  His answer?  "Stay home."  Yikes.  But still photographed her many, many, many times afterward.   Needless to say, I enjoyed this exhibit much more than the grids.  Not so sure about Golden Girl though.  I don't think she has a point of reference for this material though.  Unlike me, who probably remembers all too well some of Cecil Beaton's most famous work.

After the museums, GG came home with me and had dinner with Chizz and me.  It was here that I confronted her about her neglecting to answer my text.  (It would help my street cred, if you imagined her backed into a corner with me menacingly pointing a finger in her face, terror in her eyes.  But actually, it was more like her sitting at the table and me saying "hey why didn't you respond to my text a week ago" over chips and salsa.)  She tried to say she didn't get my text.  She protested that she would not ignore me.  Tried to blame the technology.  I was having none of it.  I may not understand how texts and IMs work but I know they work, dad-gummit!  Unless they don't.  She pulled out her phone and showed me the history of our texts together.  They were all there, except the one from me asking her to do something.  But it was on my phone, which I showed her.  It is a mystery.  We don't know why it happens but it does.  It is probably best not to thing too hard about it. 

So let's recap.  I invite GG to do something.  She ignores it (I am still not 100% convinced).  She invites me to go to Museum for class assignment.  I find her assignment boring and make her look at old photos of mostly people or things she doesn't care about for way longer than her original assignment.   Invite her back to our house under the guise of giving her dinner.  Make her walk long way through park.   Accuse her of ignoring my texts.  Make her sit and talk with me and Chizz for a long time after dinner, quizzing her on every aspect of her college life and friends.  Send her home in rain. 

Yep, we will never see her again.