I miss my childhood days in New York. I remember dad at the wheel of the family’s 1960 Chevy, driving quickly yet cautiously along the exciting, elevated, narrow-landed West Side Highway.
My brother and I are sitting in the back seat, craning our necks to see the liners docked below.
“Look! It’s the Italia!” I shout, pointing at a white liner with the buff funnels decorated with little crowns.
I always loved my little brother.
“That’s not the Italia, stupid,” says my brother, Little Jimmy, in his carefully cultivated I-know-far-more-than-you-do-voice. “That’s the Homeric.”
I immediately shoot back. “It’s the Italia, jerk. Anyway, how would you know? You couldn’t even tell the difference between the United States and the America.”
My brother’s face darkens and scrunches up tightly until het looks like a little Walnut. “Yes, I so could tell!!!!” he yells. “I could! I could! I could!”
Little Jimmy then begins bouncing up and down on his seat in righteous anger. “I, too, could tell the difference between the United States and America,” he says. “That’s easy.”
“No way,” I shout back. “I mean, you couldn’t even tell the difference between the Queen Mary and the Franconia.”
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