I fully expected November 8, 2012, to be a fun day. I was on vacation, a week-long trip to New York, which I hadn’t been back to in a couple of years. Although I had events planned during the evenings, my days were unstructured. This was on purpose – I wanted the freedom to explore the city without having to adhere to the rigid structure that vacations can sometimes fall into.

Plus, my friends were all working during the day, anyway.

After I woke up, I looked at the things that I wanted to cross off my list. I had already visited the sections of Manhattan I used to frequent when I lived there, and eaten much of the food I specifically wanted to find. But I hadn’t yet been to the 2nd Avenue Deli, which in the years since I lived in NY had moved out of the East Village and now had two locations, including one on the Upper East Side, not too far from my friend’s apartment – just far enough that it would make a nice walk and let me take in more of the city, but not so far that I’d be annoyed to walk there. Perfect.

I headed up 1st Avenue toward the deli, taking my time, enjoying the sounds and smells that make Manhattan such an interesting, unique environment. People and cars rushed about, everyone in a hurry to their destination. A few joggers ran past, ducking in between people in suits and women with strollers and construction workers.

Eventually I arrived at the deli and looked around – it was the middle of the lunch rush, and it was packed. I told the waitress that I’d be happy to sit at the counter, which was the only available space (and, given that I was by myself, likely the only space they would have offered). I found a seat, took off my coat and hat, and ordered – a half corned beef sandwich (because of course), and a bowl of matzo ball soup, which I had been craving and which was perfect for the chilly day.

As I waited for my food, I looked around, taking in the conversations, the clinking of glasses and the shouts of the staff as they moved orders through at an impressive pace. Before long, my soup arrived – steaming and inviting, the matzo ball looked a little like an unstitched baseball sitting in translucent broth.

After doing what almost every tourist my age does (take photo on iPhone, post to Facebook with pithy comment in description), I began to eat the soup – it was just as I remembered it. The chicken soup was light, not too salty, and the matzo ball was firm and soaked up the broth. I tend to be a fast eater (trained at my grandmother’s house, where if you ate too slow, all the food would be gone and you wouldn’t get seconds), but this I wanted to enjoy. I ate slowly, trying to enjoy the whole experience – especially since I didn’t know when I would be back in New York again. It was as though I was in a trance, and for a moment, everything else faded from view – it was just me and that soup.

“Best matzo ball soup in the city, right there.”

Snapped back to the present, I looked over to my left for the source of the gravely observation, and saw an elderly rabbi smiling back at me,  a few seats down the counter.

“I missed it. I used to go to the old 2nd Avenue Deli, years ago,” I said, although part of my brain was wondering whether this would be a long (and thus soup-cooling) conversation.

But our exchange was brief – he asked where I was visiting from,  and we talked about the surprising snow flurry that had passed through earlier in the week. After a bit, he (perhaps sensing my initial apprehension, or perhaps just understanding how good the soup really is) told me that I’d better finish my soup before it got cold. I smiled at him and went back to eating. A nice, brief encounter with a rabbi I probably would never see again.

As I finished my lunch, one of the waiters dropped off a bag of take out for the rabbi. He thanked the waiter and smiled at me.

“Best part of this job is the food.”

It was then that the rabbi explained that he was the one who made sure that everything was kosher at 2nd Avenue Deli – a job he had done back when the deli was still in the East Village, near his synagogue on 6th street – a synagogue that I had walked past numerous times (but never actually entered) when I lived in the neighborhood.

On any other day, perhaps, one of us might have said “well, it’s time to go, it was nice meeting you.” I had finished my meal. The food he was waiting on had arrived. Neither of us had any connection to the other, beyond this brief, chance meeting. But instead, we continued to talk – about the city, about life, about nothing in particular. He told me how he had moved to New York “for six months,” and how those six months became forty-four years. I talked about my pursuit of a career in comedy, which he approved of, saying:

“Oh, that’s good. You know, you have to laugh. That’s the main thing in life. You have to laugh. That’s how you make it through.”

The waiter brought us both egg creams, which we enjoyed as we continued to talk. He told me a little about how the gentrification of the East Village was threatening the synagogue – with a dwindling population, and the value of real estate in the area, developers were trying to take over the land and replace it with apartments. He noted that the city was working to help protect the site as a historical landmark, which would afford the building some protection – although he seemed to have some reservations with those preservation efforts, as well. He talked about how much the city had changed, and specifically, how the East Village had changed. I said little. I didn’t want to interrupt the crash course in the history of the neighborhood I once called home.

Then, at a certain point, we both felt it – although neither of us was in a rush to get anywhere, we had reached the end of the conversation. We shook hands (and finally exchanged names – he introduced himself as Rabbi Ackerman) and he invited me to visit him at the synagogue the next time I was in New York. I promised that I would. As he stood to go, he smiled at me.

“You’re not going to forget this. I can tell. I won’t forget this either. I have a good memory, you know.”

I watched him as he walked out the door, leaning only slightly on his cane, and out to the busy street. I paid for my lunch and went about the rest of my day.

I didn’t forget our conversation. Through the past several months, which at times have been chaotic and frustrating, I have (always when I needed it) recalled that conversation, and whenever I do, it helps put things into perspective. It serves as a reminder of how a chance meeting can lead to something interesting, how a brief conversation can be impactful, and how you never know how you’re going to affect a stranger.

I never did get a chance to visit Rabbi Ackerman at his synagogue. In June, after a short illness, he passed away at the age of 84. I would have liked to have had another chance to speak with him, to hear more about the old East Village, about life, and perhaps, shared another laugh.

This is part of a series of posts in which I recall a random experience which I will probably never do again. Full disclosure: I’ve definitely told versions of this story before in a variety of arenas, but hopefully this will serve as the most comprehensive (and final) version of this story.

When I was 9 years old, I was on the best baseball team I’d ever been on.****

That’s not something I say because we won our league title (which we did), or because it was the most fun team I was ever on (it wasn’t), but from a pure ability standpoint, it was, top to bottom, the most talented team I was a part of. There was so much talent* on the team, this was the first team I didn’t entrench myself at one particular position – my first time playing as a true utility player, as I was moved all over the field, playing, at various points throughout the season, second base, all three outfield positions, relief pitcher (although to be honest, I don’t recall if I ever got into a game), and catcher.

The team had four starting pitchers. Kai (the son of the head coach) was our ace. A big, strong kid who threw incredibly hard. I once got jammed on a pitch inside and dropped the bat because of the feedback. Ekolu (who would go on to be a quarterback and pitcher at one of the top high schools in the state) was the number two guy, tall, lanky, tough to hit against. Our third pitcher, sadly, I don’t remember, although I do remember that when I became the starting catcher (our regular starter was injured for a few weeks, giving me additional playing time), he sprained my thumb on the first pitch he threw me in a game. Our fourth pitcher, Timmy, was another tall, skinny kid who somehow threw incredibly hard, but also had a penchant for hitting batters (which is why he was our 4th pitcher).

Timmy would grow up to be this guy:

Timmy Chang, the all-time NCAA leader in career interceptions thrown (and a bunch of other stats, too).

But at this point, he was still a kid like me. A kid who threw incredibly hard, and had some control issues with his fastball, which the coaches were working on.

One day, he was scheduled to pitch in practice, which meant that before he actually went to the mound, he had to warm up. Since I was the backup catcher (and had been in batting practice, and thus wasn’t on the field already), I was told to warm him up.

Timmy and I went to the side of the field, and started playing catch, to loosen his arm up before he would eventually go in to pitch in the simulated game. Even playing catch, Timmy threw the ball hard – much harder than I could, and he barely looked like he was trying.

With every satisfying WHACK! of ball on glove, he got closer to being ready. And the closer he got to being ready, the harder he threw.

We were probably a dozen or so warmup tosses away from him being done, when I tossed the ball back to Timmy and heard one of the assistant coaches calling to me. I have to be completely honest, I don’t recall what was said at all, or why he was talking to me at that particular moment – he might have been asking if Timmy was ready. Or he might have been asking me to put on the catcher’s gear. I don’t remember.

What I do remember is that I heard someone else yell out:

“Danny!”

It was Timmy. I assumed that he was anxious to finish warming up and get into the simulated game. After all, we were 11 and 12 years old, and when you’re that age, the pitcher is the rockstar. Everyone wants to pitch. I wanted to pitch even though I knew that on that team, I had absolutely no business ever stepping on the mound (and again, I’m not entirely certain I did, at least, not in a game).

I turned to look back at Timmy and saw this**:

WHACK!

Although I don’t remember it, I fell down, and right away noticed that I was bleeding from my mouth. I also noticed that I was missing one of my two front teeth, but mostly what I noticed was OW OW OW PAIN PAIN PAIN.

The coaches and the players and, of course, Timmy, all rushed over. We got some ice from somebody’s water jug to numb my face down a bit – luckily, I had been hit in the mouth, just below my nose – so there were no breaks, no damage to the nose or eyes, and no concussion. My parents were called, and my mother picked me up – by that point, the bleeding had mostly subsided.

One of the coaches stopped by my house later that day with my tooth – they had found it in the field. It had been neatly sheared about 2/3 of the way to the gumline (meaning I still had the root) and remarkably had broken off cleanly. A week later, my dentist reattached it so that I didn’t look like a hockey player when I went to school. Two years later, the root, damaged by the impact, would finally require a root canal (which I was wide awake for, so I’ll try to remember to write about that later).

Ultimately, nothing much came of it – I had managed to escape serious injury***, and it was, by all accounts, an accident. I was back at the next practice, although because of my newly reattached tooth, I was required to wear a face mask on my batting helmet, which, as you might imagine, made me the popular kid when I went up to the plate.

But I’ll always be able to say that a future college quarterback knocked out my tooth when I was 9.

 

*As to my own talent level, I was never a phenomenal baseball player – I would guess that throughout my youth I was probably slightly above average. I was never the biggest, strongest, or fastest kid, but I hustled all the time and probably understood the rules better than most. By this point, however, some kids around me were starting to get their first growth spurts (I wouldn’t get my first real growth spurt until halfway through high school), and so although I wasn’t a bad baseball player, others were much, much more physically dominant.

**Apologies for the screenshot, but that gives you a rough idea of how close the ball was/what it looked like when I turned my head.

***This thought actually didn’t occur to me until right this moment, but if the ball had hit me in the side of the head (in other words, if Timmy hadn’t yelled at me and I hadn’t turned my head), I might have taken the ball in the cheekbone and/or just below my ear. Luckily, it was too low to hit me in the temple, but it seems that I might have actually been more seriously injured if the brunt of the impact had landed in either of those areas. Maybe I should call Timmy up and tell him thanks. Or at least stop mentioning that he holds the NCAA record for interceptions thrown in a career.

****EDIT: This post initially stated that I was 11 years old when this happened. I happened to watch a bit of an old tape and I was actually 9. The post has been edited to reflect this.