Every time my sister Marcia comes into the City we treat it like a mini vacation.

She was here this week to see her granddaughter and my niece in a middle school talent show.

We knew the kid had talent to burn and she didn’t disappoint but I’m nor sure that was true of a few of the other kids.

I was even thinking that being in this show must have been mandatory or why else would the kid who threw around 3 sticks have chosen to perform that as his talent. He had to search long and hard to come up with that. And in truth he wasn’t even that good at it unless dropping one of the sticks was just to show how difficult it could be.

Kindly the audience gave screaming ovations before and after each and every performance.

Then came two very handsome boys introduced as one accompanying his friend on the guitar while the other sang a song he wrote. “Wrote” was a strong word as was “sang”. The kid screamed some words he threw together.

Have any of you seen the Broadway show “Stomp”? This is where a group of dancers use their feet as rhythmic drums and move in unison.

Well we were blessed with the middle school version of this where the only thing the dancers did together was put on red shirts.

We were all entertained out so we skipped the second half of the show and went to dinner.

We chose a French Vietnamese restaurant in my neighborhood.

We no sooner sat down with our drinks when 4 men were put next to us. Two of them were older, I would say in their late 60’s and two were in their middle 40’s. It was clearly a business dinner and the business was international  because they were talking about Hong Kong.

If you’re wondering how I know that it’s because the tables were very close together. So close in fact that when the young guy sitting next to me, let’s call him Clark. toasted the table he included us in his toast and spoke to us a few times during the meal.

I don’t want to suggest that I don’t listen to other peoples conversations because I do especially if it’s a couple fighting or something interesting but the tables were really close so I kind of had no choice.

While Marcia and I enjoyed our meal we mostly ignored the goings on at the next table until one of the older men, let’s call him Reginald, asked the others

“Who do you think will be the next President?”

No one answered so he continued. I didn’t catch everything he said but I did hear

“He never did anything illegal and though it’s true that he lost a lot of money in Atlantic City, everyone lost money there. He’s still a brilliant business man”

I didn’t hear the rest because Marcia started threatening me. “Don’t say a word. They are not our people. Mind your own business. That is a separate table.”

Since she’s my big sister I tried very hard to obey her. We paid the check and got up to leave. I leaned over and looked Reginald in the face.

“By the way boys, the next President will be Hillary”

Reggie looked like I slapped him. I guess he comes from a state without buttinskies but Clark’s face lightened up. He almost shouted.

“I agree and I’m backing her”

All that time I thought Clark included us in his conversation because of our remarkable beauty but it seems he was just searching for a lifeline from those two old right wing fogies.

Glad to oblige, Clarkie.