$20 for your knife

A true story I read recently...

Julio Diaz has a daily routine. Every night, the 31-year-old social worker ends his hour-long subway commute to the Bronx one stop early, just so he can eat at his favorite diner.

But one night last month, as Diaz stepped off the No. 6 train and onto a nearly empty platform, his evening took an unexpected turn.

He was walking toward the stairs when a teenage boy approached and pulled out a knife.

"He wants my money, so I just gave him my wallet and told him, 'Here you go,'" Diaz says.

As the teen began to walk away, Diaz told him, "Hey, wait a minute. You forgot something. If you're going to be robbing people for the rest of the night, you might as well take my coat to keep you warm."

The would-be robber looked at his would-be victim, "like what's going on here?" Diaz says. "He asked me, 'Why are you doing this?'"

Diaz replied: "If you're willing to risk your freedom for a few dollars, then I guess you must really need the money. I mean, all I wanted to do was get dinner and if you really want to join me ... hey, you're more than welcome.

"You know, I just felt maybe he really needs help," Diaz says.

Diaz says he and the teen went into the diner and sat in a booth.

"The manager comes by, the dishwashers come by, the waiters come by to say hi," Diaz says. "The kid was like, 'You know everybody here. Do you own this place?'"

"No, I just eat here a lot," Diaz says he told the teen. "He says, 'But you're even nice to the dishwasher.'"

Diaz replied, "Well, haven't you been taught you should be nice to everybody?"

"Yea, but I didn't think people actually behaved that way," the teen said.

Diaz asked him what he wanted out of life. "He just had almost a sad face," Diaz says.

The teen couldn't answer Diaz — or he didn't want to.

When the bill arrived, Diaz told the teen, "Look, I guess you're going to have to pay for this bill 'cause you have my money and I can't pay for this. So if you give me my wallet back, I'll gladly treat you."

The teen "didn't even think about it" and returned the wallet, Diaz says. "I gave him $20 ... I figure maybe it'll help him. I don't know."

Diaz says he asked for something in return — the teen's knife — "and he gave it to me."

Afterward, when Diaz told his mother what happened, she said, "You're the type of kid that if someone asked you for the time, you gave them your watch."

"I figure, you know, if you treat people right, you can only hope that they treat you right. It's as simple as it gets in this complicated world."

It's Official

We will be residents of Roosevelt Island NY. Our address will be 552 Main Street Apt #1005 NY, NY 10044. It's not in Manhattan but still has a NY, NY address which Amy likes. If you remember, we tried to get an apartment here when we first moved up here but it didn't work out. Now it has.

We will be moving into a studio apt on the 10th floor overlooking Main street and a nice looking old church. We also have a great view of Manhattan which I'm sure you'll see later on when I have the time to take a good picture. It's got a great kitchen with granite countertops and stainless appliances including a DISHWASHER. It's a proper kitchen with plenty of space to cook and store all the things we got from our wedding. Finally a decent apartment all around. No mice and no gunshots outside. Amy is only 2 stops from school on the F subway line. There are parks and, since it's an island, water all around.

Easter!

The phone calls we receive during Buckmaster family gatherings back home are always ridiculous. This Easter my brother David called to tell us about the Easter egg hunt my mother threw, for the adults, and how she wrapped up a picture of my sister Beth and some random guy from HS, thinking it was the current man in her life, Josh, only to find out it was not Josh. Amazing. Then, I log into my email and find one from my father, Larry Buckmaster, going over the menu he was serving every family member who lived in FL, just to let me know what I was missing out on. That was yet another special treat for me. Thanks guys. The best call so far though was when my brother called me a while back because everyone was at my dad's house having dinner and they were all arguing over who has the larger forehead and needed me to drop everything and measure my own right away (mine is not the largest).

To my funny family-just to let all of you know, Scott and I too had a wonderful day. We slept till 1pm-ish, then rolled over and slept some more, and finally woke up, went to church, and then to a gourmet pizza dinner at SBARRO in Times Square.

By the way, our church, Origins, celebrated 2 years of existence on Easter as well. There was a gathering after the service with a video on the amazing growth it has seen, and we feel thankful to be a part of it all.

Google replies with...

I contacted Google about my little language problem(previous post) and this is their reply:

Hi Scott,

Thank you for your note. We recently updated our location files and we understand you're now being redirected to www.google.es. As you may know, we normally redirect users in countries other than the United States from Google.com to one of our country-specific sites (e.g. www.google.co.uk for Google UK) to provide easy access to country-specific search features.

We investigated the IP address you provided and have verified that we now have the correct information on file for your location. In some instances, it can take more than a month for these issues to be resolved.

In the meantime, if you'd prefer to visit a domain other than the one we're redirecting you to, you can set a bookmark for that specific domain. To see a complete listing of international Google domains, please visit http://www.google.com/language_tools

We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused, and we appreciate your patience.

Regards, The Google Team

It's nice to know that they ARE listening. It's not every day that you get results from worldwide mega corporations. Now if we could get Verizon to learn a thing or two about service. They suck. If you have ever tried to call them you know what I'm talking about. It's like trying to get directions from the NYPD. Ugh. Thanks Google I am happy.

Google España

Why is my Google start page in Spanish? Is this because my IP address is in Spanish Harlem? Strange. It only started doing this in the last week or so. I feel discriminated against or something! I wonder if they set it up to be in Chinese in Chinatown, or Italian in Little Italy. What about Greek in Astoria or Russian down by Coney Island. Oh well, at least we wont be here much longer. We found a new apartment.....more to come.

FL

So I went to FL this past week for the purpose of helping my family while various members had surgery. Turns out that surgerys were not needed and I had a lot of free time and ended up playing with my nephews and niece and just did odds and ends here and there. It was a nice getaway but it was nicer to come home to my wife. I put a couple of pictures up of the kids. You can click here to see them.

Showering

Today I helped throw a wedding shower for a friend. We held it at a bar/lounge on W 56th St. These are just a few pictures of my favorite people alive, minus those still in FL…. and in SC, CA, AK, GA, and so on…

Auction

Tonight was my (Amy’s) school’s annual auction at the Union Club. Our auction speaker this year was Kathy Lee, as in, Regis and Kathy circa the 1990’s. She was actually a great speaker and spoke on the importance of Faith-she even poked fun of herself a bit with tabloid rumors based on her life. Scott’s photography services were bid on several times, his business cards were grabbed up by people I had never seen before, and most importantly, the school raised a pretty decent amount to help with the coming year. If any parents are reading this, and you were one who bid on a house in the Hamptons, or perhaps the private plane, I’m open to traveling, just throwing that out there….

Upstate Update

I, Amy, have been beyond stir crazy for the past couple of weeks. I mean, I LOVE NY, but every now and then, one just needs to see the sky, stand alone shops and houses, and grass that is not in a designated park area.
My friend Wesley has a car, since she commutes into the city each day to teach where I do, so on a whim she said that we girls should go shopping one day, in upstate NY, to just get out. I said, “done.” These pictures are from the outdoors mall.
After a full day of shopping and mountain air, my friend Mehren, who is from upstate NY, called her parents and they invited us to drive about 30 minutes even farther North to their beautiful home, complete with 2 burning fireplaces that made me want to curl up and nap for days, for a home cooked dinner. Not a bad way to spend a Sunday.