There are two kinds of New Yorkers: born-and-bred (a rare breed indeed) and transplants (99% of New York). I’m a transplant and as a transplant I have been put through what you might refer to as “hazing.” I say this loosely because most hazing stops when the “Big Sisters/Brothers” have accepted you lovingly into their arms…or when Administration reads in the city paper that one of their students was found bound and gagged to their historic monument. I’m in limbo here, neither completely accepted by Big Brother New York, nor found duct-taped to the Statue of Liberty–yet. I have had my fair share of hazing though. Most transplants have experienced at least one in five situations below:
1. mugging/robbery (mugging requires a new set of underwear)
2. eviction (someone will ALWAYS screw you over)
3. getting hit by a cab (seriously, this happens more then you hear)
4. getting shot
5. infestation (cockroaches have no fear)
I must be the exception to simple hazing, because on this list, the only thing I have had yet to experience is number three (knock on wood). I have been robbed twice (the first time was my own stupidity, the second…my own stupidity), mugged three times (all in the village, all by crazies), evicted once, shot in the ass with a bebe gun (it broke skin, that counts), and infested my first day in the city with the meanest fucking cockroaches I’ve ever come across. You would think the hazing would stop, you would think I would be patted on the back, handed a nice choccy, and sent to bed. You would be thinking wrong. You see, unless you were born under the lucky sign of zeus and grew up in this concrete playground, you are not worthy of being a New Yorker–not until New York decides at least. 
Until then, I wait my turn and watch my back, there’s no telling when that yellow cab of death is going to knock me on my ass.
