2008 Spring—Oral Training for Sophomores
Jo Ho

These Young New Yorkers Will Never Be Told to Ride a Bus to School
By ERIC KONIGSBERG


陳淑娟報告

NEW YORK - The cars gather in front of the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan about 8:30 a.m. In the front seats sit hired drivers (nobody uses the term chauffeur anymore). The cars are mostly big and mostly black luxury sport utility vehicles like the Mercedes GL-Class or the GMC Yukon Denali. They fill the lanes in front of the Y』s entrance on Lexington Avenue, often two or three rows deep.

It looks like the outside of an arbitrage house just before trading hours, or perhaps the private entrance to Madison Square Garden when the Knicks are playing basketball.

Until, that is, the drivers open the back-seat doors and the passengers』 feet emerge.

These are not the feet of profit-takers or N.B.A. players. These feet wear Sonnet Maryjanes and Primigi sneakers with Velcro closure straps.

These feet are only 15 centimeters long.

The children – ages 3 through 5 – are enrolled at the Y』s famous nursery school. The livery convention on Lexington Avenue occurs most every weekday. Neighbors of the Y and parents with children in the nursery school say they have seen the number of cars and drivers increase considerably over the past couple of years.

In exasperation, the director of the school, Nancy Schulman, drafted a letter to all families insisting that the drivers wait somewhere else while parents or baby sisters take the children in: find a legal parking place, or take their cars for a few spins around the block.

In the letter, which parents received once in the spring of 2006 and twice this school years, Ms. Schulman played perhaps the only bargaining chip she has, stating that failure to observe this rule could hinder their children』s chances of getting into the kindergarten of their choice.

「The letter said, 『When the ongoing schools ask about your cooperation, I will no choice but to tell them the truth,』」 one parents said.

Some parents applauded the action. 「Personally, I think it』s great of the Y to do that,」 said one mother who takes her child to school by taxi, who was getting coffee across the street. 「The thing with this place and drivers, it』s revolting. But, obviously, it hasn』t had any effect.」

She nodded toward the window, and its view of the morning』s big-black-car traffic jam.

Myrna Weiss, a former member of the Y』s aboard of directors and a grandparent of a child at the nursery school, interpreted the use of chauffeurs as a way for parents to protect their children door to door. She added: 「It』s also about one-upmanship. That game used to be played much more quietly, over what clubs the parents had their children』s birthday parties at. There weren』t such visible signs of a pecking order.」

David G. Liston, the chairman of Manhattan Community Board 8, which represents the Upper East Side, said he had not heard of any complaints about the cars. 「But I』ve definitely gone past the Y and seen lots of cars lined up full of people who do not appear to be parents of these kids,」 he said. 「It』s probably just a fact of life on the Upper East Side.」