New York City is not the City for Me

️We had a blast in NYC last week. Our first morning there we went to a bagel shop, Bagels on the Square, where we got the local treatment of being yelled at by the staff. You better well know what the hell you want when you walk into that place, at least that's how I interpreted their behavior. I knew I had been wanting to try cream cheese and lox, but they probably had 30 or so different kinds of cream cheese to choose from and I didn't even get a chance to look at them all. It was a little off putting, but the bagel was very good. I ordered an everything bagel (my go to bagel) with cream cheese and lox, not toasted. It was very yummy. I told Keri, I'd have that again.

We got "kauffee" (pronounced in a NY accent) around the corner from our apartment, not Stump Town, but it was good. As we waited for our kauffee that first morning a bunch of little kids were rushing off to school and one of them popped into the little shop we were in and bought himself a danish. He wasn't more than 6 or 7 years old and he walked into that coffee shop with a 20, ordered his danish, got his change, placed a tip in the jar and ran off to school. It was so cute. He had dark curly hair and his curls were a little bigger than nickel sized. He had cute little rubber toed tennis shoes on with a little back pack.

As I observed him, I naturally thought about my son, Garrison, and the difference growing up in a city with 8.4 million (NYC) has on kids versus growing up in a city with 609,000 (Portland). That's a huge difference. I got a little curious when I looked at those numbers and looked up Manhattan, Portland, Oklahoma City and Poteau, OK. For those of you that don't know, Poteau, Oklahoma is where Garrison currently lives.

Here is what I found:
Manhattan has 1.6 million people in a 33.77 sq. mile area,
Portland has 609,500 people in a 145.1 sq. mile area,
OKC (where I grew up) has 610,600 people in 621 sq. mile area,
Poteau, OK has 8,590 people in a 31.7 sq. mile area.

I'm not usually a numbers person, but those are some pretty impressive differences. What I learned about myself in the time I spent in New York is, it's not the city for me. It seems like you have to try harder to attain peace with that many people in such a small space. I don't know about you, but I much prefer the path of least resistance to a sense of peace.