It’s hard to believe, but I’m into my fourth year of living in New York City. I’ve worked in Rockefeller Center. I’ve taken the subway from the Upper East Side to Brooklyn on Halloween. I thought I was beyond being surprised.

 

And yet.

 

The other day Jacob and I were taking a walk. It’s tough to hear him in the stroller, but I thought I heard something that sounded like,

 

“I see donkey eatin’ ova dere.”

 

I looked around, not surprised to not see a donkey, and leaned down to clarify.

 

“You mean you see a DOGGY eating over there?” I asked, wondering who was feeding a dog outside.

 

“Donkey,” Jacob repeated. “I see donkey eatin’. Ova dere.”

 

I pulled back the stroller a few paces, and looked around again. Sure enough, across the street were two horses, eating hay from bags rigged up to the trailers they stood beside. We’d walked up to the set of a movie, set, in part, in the mid-nineteenth century. Just past the horses were carriages loaded with luggage, to be pulled by said horses.

 

It still took the remainder of the day to convince Jacob the animals we saw were horses, not donkeys (I’m not sure where he got the word “donkey”; I don’t think he’s seen one before). But for the most part he was right.

 

New York City plus a toddler? Perhaps one day I really will be able to say I’ve seen it all.