Randi Kreiss

On the road with a 13-year-old: awesome

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Of course it was awesome, because everything is awesome, because awesome is the go-to word when you’re a 13-year-old who is, well, awesome.

Last week, my granddaughter and I and her iPhone spent four nights in the Big Apple as a special gift for her landmark birthday. She lives out of state, and has never spent the night in the city. We had that in common. Even though I’ve lived within an hour of Manhattan all my life, I’m a country mouse. All my visits have been day trips.

Turns out, I created a remarkably tone-deaf itinerary that included Central Park, SoHo, NoHo, Rockefeller Center, Times Square, the Museum of Natural History, MOMA, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The United Nations and three shows. Too bad there wasn’t a G-8 summit in town.

Clearly, it’s been a long time since I spent four days in the company of a 13-year-old. Sabrina and her phone had an itinerary of their own. First stop: M&M’s World, which, if you haven’t been there and you are a sane person over 21, you want to avoid. Sensory overload, big time. Sabrina loved it, and purchased an overpriced, fleecy M&M blanket as a souvenir. If she were my daughter, I would have said, “No way.” But my granddaughter?  Different rules.

On to Baked by Melissa, the chain of emporia that sell micro cupcakes. We purchased six. Then on to Sprinkles, an ice cream and bakery shop on Lexington Avenue. Two more cupcakes.

I had wanted to use our time together to talk about healthy eating, reasonable spending, feelings and world events. But this was Sabrina’s gift, and her agenda was pretty much what a normal 13-year-old would want: lots of noise, lights, screen time and sweets. It’s stunning how much I’ve forgotten about what it’s like to be a kid, even a kid who can pass for a young woman.

When I was 13, I was a scrawny nerd with exceedingly unattractive bangs. My grandmothers were old ladies who wore housecoats. An outing alone with one of them was unthinkable. They had no life. They just made latkes.

I was willing to run all over the city, but I insisted that we take the subway. That turned out to be her favorite part. We took at least two subway rides a day, crisscrossing Manhattan. Sabrina was in charge of planning the route, which was one very good thing about having a smartphone. We got to see New York in real time, with real people coming and going to and from work, and she wondered how it might be to go to school here.

Yes!

It was a really bad news weekend. The attacks in Orlando and the horrific death of a 2-year-old at Disney dominated the news. So I tried to protect her by never turning on the TV in our room. Of course, the headlines were flashing across Times Square, so I asked her what she thinks when she hears about a mass shooting.

She said it’s “awful,” and of course it is, but she is part of a generation of children who are desensitized to sickening violence. They don’t suffer the same slam-in the-belly feeling we older folks get because, sadly, they are growing up with it.

Anyway, we moved on. Sabrina’s favorite show was Blue Man Group. It’s all about gushy stuff squirting out of the actors’ vests, toilet paper rolling over the audience and strobe lights.

My favorite was the Alvin Ailey ballet. Sabrina dances, but I could tell she was a bit bored. I couldn’t even entice her to walk through the Lincoln Center Crafts Show for more than a few minutes, and no wonder. No cupcakes.

We crossed off the museums and added the Fifth Avenue Apple Store to our plan and a brief stop at Nintendo World. We ate Indian food, Chinese food and an awful lunch at Ellen’s Stardust Diner, where the servers are great singers. We had outstanding ice cream cones at Holy Cream.

The closest we got to a museum was the Metropolitan Museum of Art store in Rockefeller Center.

In our hotel room, Sabrina’s phone did a stroby, flashy, buzzing thing in the middle of the first night, which made me think we were under attack. After that I insisted that it be silenced overnight. But it was the first thing she looked at when she opened her eyes in the morning.

I embarrassed her, I’m afraid, when I bargained with a street vendor for a backpack. He said $25. I said $20. He said $23. I said OK. She said, “Grandma!”

All in all, our weekend was a great gift for Sabrina, but an even better gift for me. I have a suspicion that she could write her own column about being on the road with her 60-something granny, and perhaps one day she will, but for now I’m safe. Her writing is limited to 140-character tweets or five seconds on Snapchat.

Copyright © 2016 Randi Kreiss. Randi can be reached at randik3@aol.com.