{"id":5379,"date":"2020-07-28T11:12:43","date_gmt":"2020-07-28T15:12:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/morrison-q.com\/wp\/?p=5379"},"modified":"2020-07-28T11:13:42","modified_gmt":"2020-07-28T15:13:42","slug":"an-experience-when-i-was-young-and-foolish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/morrison-q.com\/wp\/?p=5379","title":{"rendered":"An experience when I was young and foolish"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 1977 when I was 18, I lived with my folks, in a town called West Long Branch, in New Jersey. It was located one mile from the Atlantic Ocean, and a short 45 minute train ride to Grand Central Station in New York City. So I decided that I wanted to watch the big ball drop in Times Square in person this year for New Years Eve, instead of watching it on TV. So I called my friend Josh and asked him if he wanted to come along. He said lets do it. So on New Years Eve I picked him and his girlfriend, Angie up, in my car, and along with my girlfriend at the time, Marge, we drove to the train station located in the town of Long Branch, one town over from ours. Josh and I had gotten tickets to see “Jesus Christ Superstar” on Broadway, and made plans to eat dinner in NYC at a nice restaurant near the theater district.<\/p>\n

After arriving in Grand Central station, it was a short cab ride to the theater district where we found a nice Chinese restaurant and we all had a wonderful dinner. Then as we were leaving the restaurant a cook came out from the kitchen holding a very large meat cleaver in one hand. (Now is probably a good time to tell you that my “friend” Josh worked as a dishwasher and waiter at a restaurant back in West Long Branch, and some of the cooks were Chinese and they would teach Josh how to say certain words and phrases in Cantonese. One of those sayings was “Gung hay fat choy”, pronounced “Gung ho faw chow”, which meant translated into English, “Happy New Year”. So finding it appropriate that we were going to be dinning in a Chinese restaurant, Josh proceeded to teach us how to say it on the train ride up). So getting back to the man with the very large meat cleaver, as we are about to reach the front door, my girlfriend turns around, smiles and waves at the man and says “Gung Ho Faw Chow”. Now the man starts shouting and raises the meat cleaver over his head, and starts toward us, and we all run out the door as fast as we can. After running it seems like a block, we stop to catch our breath, and Josh is laughing so hard he can hardly stand. He explains that he forgot to tell us that in some parts of China that saying is a great insult, and the cook probably thought we were saying that we did not enjoy his food.<\/p>\n

So after we all threatened to throw him in front of the next bus that came by, we all had a good laugh, and it was a short walk to the theater where we watched a fantastic play. We all really enjoyed the play. It let out about 10:00. So we had plenty of time to kill before New Years. So we found a bar near Times Square, stopped in and had a beer or two. Then at 11 pm we headed to Times Square to find a very good place to watch the big ball drop.<\/p>\n

We when we arrived at about 11:15 or so it wasn’t really very crowded, but by the time it got to 11:45 it had gotten so crowded that the four of us had interlocked arms and we literally could not put our arms down to our sides.Just after the ball dropped the crowd started pushing and it just kept getting tighter and tighter and the crowd began to start pushing even more.The more we tried to push back the more the crowd pushed forward. And to make it even worse there were gangs that had created snakes by interlocking their arms and pushing through the crowds and pick pocketing as they went. Fortunately an uncle had told me years ago anytime you were in a large crowd always put your wallet in your front pocket. So none of us got pick pocketed. But then a man close to us fell, and then another person fell on top of him, and so on, like a pile of dominoes, and the more we tried to push back the more the crowd push us toward the ever larger pile on the ground. The four of us still had our arms interlocked and although Josh, Angie and I fell on the pile, my girlfriend Marge who had a lower center mass (a nice way of saying she was the shortest of us) refused to fall, and she actually helped us get back to our feet. In all I guess about twenty of us all fell, but amazingly none of us got hurt except the very first fellow who had fallen, he had cut his arm on a broken piece of glass, but it wasn’t too bad. As Josh and I was taller than most of the surrounding people, we raised our arms and started shouting just keep walking in one direction, which seemed to work, because the crowd started to thin out until we could start heading toward to train station. Unfortunately by the time we made it there, the last train had left for the Jersey Shore, and the next train was not due to leave till 8:00 AM. It was now sometime after 1:00 AM. The clerk told us if we hurried we could still make the last bus that was due to leave for Long Branch, NJ were my car was parked at the train station at 2:00. So we made a mad dash toward the bus station which was about a mile away, and we made it in time, and boarded the very last bus going to near where my car was parked. So we had a long peaceful ride back to the bus station in Long Branch, NJ. I even got a little kissing in with my girl. Then we had about a mile walk from the bus station to the train station and my car.<\/p>\n

What an eventful night. I will never forget what a great time we all had, but how the outcome could have been very different. As I look back on that night I wouldn’t change a thing. But It cured me of ever wanting to be in a large crowd again.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately for my friend Josh and his girlfriend they hadn’t learned their lesson just quite yet. They went back the following year with a mutual friend Rich. And after the ball had fallen they went to a club nearby to go dancing. While on the dance floor a guy acted like he was drunk and fell into Angie, pulling her gold chain that she had around her neck, and out the door he went. Josh and Rich gave chase and the man turned down an ally. As Josh and Rich started down the ally about 5 or six guys stepped out of the shadows. Needless to say Josh and Rich high tailed it out of there and back to where there were people. A close call to say the least. Finally Josh decided they had enough of NYC on New Years Eve!!!<\/p>\n

I continued to go to New York City, many times since that night, but I think that has to be the most memorable.<\/p>\n

Cheers!<\/p>\n

Jim Q12<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 1977 when I was 18, I lived with my folks, in a town called West Long Branch, in New Jersey. It was located one mile from the Atlantic Ocean, and a short 45 minute train ride to Grand Central … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/morrison-q.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/morrison-q.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/morrison-q.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morrison-q.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morrison-q.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5379"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/morrison-q.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5379\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5381,"href":"https:\/\/morrison-q.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5379\/revisions\/5381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/morrison-q.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morrison-q.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morrison-q.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}