Brandon Stanton's Blog, page 114

“I haven’t worked with an American for three years. I’m a union drywall finisher, and my job has...

“I haven’t worked with an American for three years. I’m a union drywall finisher, and my job has...

“I’ve been crocheting since I was 15. I started out with...

“I’ve been crocheting since I was 15. I started out with patterns from the magazines but there was one point where I just said ‘screw this’ and started designing everything myself. I’ve got twelve giant tubs of yarn at home. Everything I make is one of a kind, even if it’s a shawl. My shawl is going to have a slightly different color or slightly different stitch than any other shawl. I’ve crocheted hundreds of Christmas presents. I crocheted the sweater I’m wearing. I even helped crochet a sweater for a huge water tower. My section alone took three weeks. The theme of the Crochet Guild convention last year was ‘under the sea,’ so I knitted 110 sea horse pins. And right now I’m working on a mermaid tail for the daughter of the niece of my brother-in-law.”

“I started my career as a teller at a community bank in Florida....

“I started my career as a teller at a community bank in Florida. I was in my early thirties. At the time I had a young child and I just needed a way to pay my rent and car payment. But I kept moving up. I wouldn’t say I’m overly ambitious. It didn’t come from a place of ‘I need more.’ I just have a lot of energy. And I’d always ask the next question or apply for the next job. So I worked my way up to CEO. It was demanding but I enjoyed the position. I was handling it quite well until a few years ago when my husband passed away. Then my mother. And then my best friend. All of this happened in a single year. I’d never even lived alone before. Suddenly I felt unanchored. I reached this place of ‘what do I do now?’ I couldn’t go back to making more money. So I decided to make a change. I went back to college to get a Master of Public Administration. And right now I’m actually on the lunch hour for my final class. I’ve already got a job waiting on me back home. I’m the new Director of Broward County’s Business Council on Homelessness. We’re working toward getting homeless people into permanent housing. And I’m really excited. I want to do a great job. I’m in a place where I can change some lives. It feels like I’ve moved from success to significance.”

“I love walking around the city. I catch the Metro North train...

“I love walking around the city. I catch the Metro North train at 11:40 every morning. I go to the same gym that I’ve been going to for forty years. Then I just start walking. If you take big strides it really stretches you out. And there are millions of other people walking around. You never feel alone. People smile at you. On weekends I’ll bring my granddaughters with me and we’ll tour different neighborhoods. We’ve seen ten or twelve so far. Sometimes I get to borrow them for the whole afternoon. But they’re at sleep away camp right now so I’m missing them a lot. And that’s about it. I do a little shopping at the thrift store. I stop and read the paper. I eat at outdoor restaurants. It’s simple but I found what makes me happy and I’m doing it. And when I’m heading home at night, sometimes I think: ‘I just had the best day of my life.’”

“I’m a single father raising a teenager. We’re meeting...

“I’m a single father raising a teenager. We’re meeting here in a few minutes to go on a run. I’m trying to teach him discipline and focus. He’s had some problems paying attention in school, but I don’t want to put him on medication. His mother and I divorced when he was four. She’s a good person. She’s very appreciative of what I’ve done. She just wasn’t ready to be a parent. I was in a much better place. So she didn’t fight me on custody. But it scares me to think if she had. The courts are set up against men. They almost always determine that women should raise kids and men should pay child support. I don’t understand it. There’s a big push to see women as equal workers. Why can’t men be equal parents?”

“I took him to see Brokeback Mountain when it came out. I...

“I took him to see Brokeback Mountain when it came out. I thought I was challenging him with the choice. But at the end of the film, he turned to me and said: ‘That’s me.’ We’d been married for thirty years. Our kids were still young. I didn’t know what to do. Do I leave? Do I stay? We were ex-pats in another country at the time, so we were all alone. I had nobody to talk to. We went to a therapist to see if it was possible to stay together, and she told us: ‘I’ve seen it work. But only if one person is very discrete and the other is very tolerant.’ So I agreed to try. It’s been ten years. It’s been exhausting in a lot of ways. I asked too many questions at first. I made myself miserable. Now I give him a lot of space. And I get a lot of space in return. I’ve been traveling alone for about two months now. I know what’s going on back home but I don’t ask about it. My friends ask me why I don’t move on with my life. I don’t know the answer. Maybe I’m just too afraid to be alone at this age. But I still feel like he’s my soul mate. We have the same view of the world. We both love children. We love traveling and good food. He really is a good man. He’s just gay. And we’ve had such a good life together, I’m just not ready to stop sharing it.”

“So one day I’m sitting here talking to this lady, and I’m...

“So one day I’m sitting here talking to this lady, and I’m eating a sandwich. And the lady says to me: ‘There’s a sparrow sitting on your sandwich.’ And I think, ‘Wow. That’s pretty thrilling.’ So I began to feed it. And that sparrow started spreading the word, and I developed a bit of a reputation in the sparrow community. And suddenly I become the sparrow guy. There’s like sixty of them waiting for me every morning. All these benches are covered in shit.”

“My superpower is fire. It’s inside my hands but I only use it...

“My superpower is fire. It’s inside my hands but I only use it on bullies. My dad is a superhero too. His power is minding his own business.”

“My wife and I were in our late thirties when we met. Kids just...

“My wife and I were in our late thirties when we met. Kids just weren’t in the cards for us. I always thought I would have been a good dad, but time just went by and it never happened. So we raised a little family of dachshunds instead. We got Ozzie and Eva shortly after getting together. They both lived for thirteen years. Having two extra lives in the house was a wonderful thing. They needed to be cared for. They gave and received love. I imagine that it’s a little like having a kid. When Oscar passed away, I was so distraught that I passed out on the floor of the vet. Eva lived for another year, and after she died, we decided to wait before adopting again. We lasted about a year. Pepper came from a high kill shelter in Los Angeles. She was terrified for the first few weeks and wouldn’t come near us. But she trusts us now. She is definitely a Daddy’s girl.”

“My son is on the computer all the time. He’ll start as soon as...

“My son is on the computer all the time. He’ll start as soon as he gets home from school and goes until bedtime. It’s some sort of adventure game involving teamwork. He wears a headset and plays with his friends. His goal was to go outside more this summer but that hasn’t happened. Maybe I enabled him. I held off on getting him a phone and computer, but at some point every other kid has got one. And you don’t want him to fall behind with technology. He’s a good kid. His grades are pretty good. His teachers love him. He’s very polite. He helps his mother. I just wish he’d apply his interest in games to other things. He was in science club, but he quit that. He took some Tae Kwon Do lessons, but he quit that. I thought maybe coding classes would interest him because he loves being on the computer, but that didn’t work either. I also played video games as a kid. But we’d just beat a few levels of Mario, and then we’d get a call to come outside. But that doesn’t happen anymore. Because the person who’d normally call you is on the other end of the headset.”