Familiar to the Touch

Dear Diary:

In the 1990s, I would take the F train from Brooklyn to get to my job on Seventh Avenue and 25th Street. I would get off at the northeast corner of Sixth Avenue and 23rd Street and walk to work from there.

There is a school for the blind on this route, and one day I met a blind woman at the northwest corner of the intersection. She asked me to help her cross the street. I gave her my arm.

“Oh, you feel like a Christmas cookie,” she said as we crossed.

I thanked her and escorted her to the subway entrance I had just come out of and told her exactly where she was. Then I resumed my walk to work.

I never saw her again.