15 Minutes of Fame.

I paid a panhandler for the first time ever today.

I went to Manhattan on the subway; I had a meeting and couldn’t get a babysitter. We took the bus and train downtown. Thankfully, the meeting was in the same building as Daddy’s office, so it was easy to make a switch in the lobby as I worked on a business deal. On the way home, we took the subway and bus again. While sitting on the train, a musician came on with a clarinet. He said, “please help me while I take my music to the next level.” Normally, I never look at any of these guys, but you can’t control where a two year old’s eyes wander. Of course, the clarinet player was standing right next to me, so we couldn’t ignore it.

He played a song I hadn’t heard of, and the woman on the other side of David handed him a dollar. When he turned to accept his money, his eyes caught David’s, and he played “itsy bitsy spider” for the little guy. I said at that point that I needed to pay him; he paid attention and sang a song David knew. I had a silver (gold) dollar coin that I also wanted to get rid of, so I handed it to him. He looked and said “you didn’t have to do that,” but then decided to play “twinkle twinkle little star.” That perked David up even more. He started bobbing his head back and forth and singing on the top of his lungs. Mind you, this was in a subway car. Everyone looked at him and smiled. They were all laughing at the cuteness.

At the next stop, the lady next to David got up and said “that was his 15 minutes of fame,” to which I replied, “yeah, but it’s not on YouTube!”