“You can have a town, why don’t you take it?”

I moved to New York a week before my birthday in 2005. I have no memory of boarding the plane, which is odd considering I probably had my mother’s heart bleeding in my carry on luggage, but I do remember the flight itself. I recall looking around and wondering if anyone else on my flight was moving to Manhattan that day. How many other people had chosen March 6^th to begin their lives and would there be an orientation?

Have you ever been on a plane when the captain gets on the loudspeaker and congratulates a couple of newlyweds or welcomes someone aboard who is celebrating their 21^st birthday (as if any of us were ever that young)? It felt like that. “Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you for flying JetBlue today and a special shout out to Ms. Amanda McDorman who’s leaving behind everyone and everything she knows for delusions of grandeur in Oz.” Applause. Applause.

I thought that everyone should be aware. It felt like they might.

Perhaps they could tell because I was still clutching my purse the way they tell you to in instructional videos from the 80’s for Japanese tourists travelling to big bad New York. My biggest fear was not that I wouldn’t find a place to live, job, friends, but rather that someone was going to steal the three immovable 70 pound duffel bags I came with. I have no idea how I got them from the curb to my walk up room, but I was just glad the cab driver didn’t take off with them. After that I didn’t have much of a game plan.

It must have been important to me at the time to do this alone, but Lord knows why. Simple math would have proven that to be a challenge. Two arms, three bags, one fool.

My mom had a friend who had a friend who owned of all things a bed and breakfast on the Upper West Side. Yes, they exist. I rented a room there for a week. Essentially it was a brownstone studio that had a kitchen stocked with cereal. Bon Appetit! The room was just what I wanted it to look like though, all 300 perfectly claustrophobic square feet of it. (Why is exposed brick so romantic? I mean really, shouldn’t it be just the opposite?)

By the time I carried by body bags upstairs I was famished and it was late. Not knowing anyone or anywhere to go I walked around the corner to the first place I saw that was open. Original Ray’s Pizza. It would be another year before I realized Ray’s questionable originality. I ordered a slice and a Coors Light to take away (although I imagine at the time I still said “to go”) and brought them back up to eat on the little balcony extending from my room. I remember thinking how it all looked like a movie set; staring at the backs of apartments facing me and rows of windows filled with New York stories. Someone had even taken the time to perfectly place a water tower on the roof for effect. Cut. Scene and Print.

When I was leaving the golden state, anytime I told someone I was moving to New York, from my boss to my dry cleaner, they all had the same inevitable response. Not “I have a lead for you at this great non-profit” or “Call my niece when you get there,” but “Oh! Just like Mary Tyler Moore,” and then…that damn hat. “You should toss yours in the air when you get there,” they all suggested. Sure thing. I’ll make a note.

In fairness not everyone had the same suggestion. Some of them thought it was a scene from “That Girl”. I had, for the record, never seen either program, but the hat appeared to be key.

That first night was so cold, not California cold, when you say it's freezing as a descriptive term, but actual cold, when freezing means your drool could potentially turn to ice on your face. It didn’t matter though. I was flushed. I inhaled my slice (I’ve never been able eat California pizza since that day) finished my beer, wished I had another and tossed my knit cap in the air.

Turns out they were right.