An Unwelcome Handful of Meat

I was on my way to a meeting on the Lower East Side, when I chanced upon a very unlikely damsel in distress. OK, she wasn’t exactly a damsel. Young maidens are damsels and this woman was neither young nor was she a maiden.

She appeared to be in her late sixties, sporting medium-length white hair with some purple and pink highlights sprinkled in near the front. Since I never learned this woman’s identity, I have to assume her name was Gladys.

Gladys was standing close to a black iron fence in front of a famous New York graveyard called the Marble Cemetery. I could see right away that she was a multi-tasker. She was fumbling through her purse, trying to keep an umbrella upright and handling the reins of her two wild Pomeranians.

The second she saw me, she started yelling at me like we had some previous engagement, “Come over here please, I need your help! C’mon, C’mon.”

She put down her umbrella, secured the two pet Pomeranians and reached into her purse.

“Hold your hand out,” she ordered.

“Umm, what are you going to put into my hand?” I asked sheepishly.

“Don’t worry,” she assured me, “It’s just meat, do you know the legend of the Raven?”

I didn’t know about the raven, but ever the wiseass, I answered, “Doesn’t everyone?”

I held out my hand and she put a very suspicious looking piece of meat-like substance into it. As I eyed this meat-glob with some dismay, she reached into her purse and added a dried out piece of roast beef.

“I can’t throw very far,” Gladys explained. “Can you fling it over the fence towards the giant tree?” "You have to get it near the tree so the "raven" can get it."

I fired the meaty contents of my hands the instant she finished the sentence. The meat rocket sailed over the fence and landed right next to the giant tree. She was pleased, I was a bit nauseous, and she began speaking to the poms as if I had already left. I never saw this mysterious "raven" but I'm sure it could find better things to eat than that mess I had fired over the fence.

Life is like a handful of dirty meat in New York City, you never know what you’re going to get.