Some people wake up on Monday mornings complaining about a new week of work or school. To me, Monday morning is synonymous with the New York Times Metropolitan Diary column. This weekly feature collects vignettes from ordinary people about their experiences of everyday life in New York. It is an entertaining gathering of questions and observations by children through very senior citizens heard on such places as movie lines and buses, in theater lobbies, restaurants (delis in particular), health clubs, cocktail lounges, and escalators (especially at Bloomingdale's). Having debuted in 1977, the column has come to characterize city life and has become one of the paper's most popular and talked-about features--but not just among New Yorkers. In the 1990s, when the Diary was dropped from the Times' National Edition, a storm of protest rose so loudly that the newspaper made a rare about-face and reinstated it.

The column provides a taste of home for me, an exiled New Yorker. I have a thing for personal stories and observances and small histories, and in Metropolitan Diary (or "Dear Diary" as it is sometimes called), New Yorkers write to The Times to share what they've seen and heard and remembered: the profound, the peculiar, the unexpected, an ubiquitous New York moment that New Yorkers think only true New Yorkers get. But don’t we all get it?

People write short small illustrative sketches and poetry. One of my favorites is a haiku written by an L. Fred Avayzian:

This Daylight Saving
This hour gained, but empty, hushed
No one told the birds

Take a look at this week’s diary about a huge bullfrog on a train, a serenade on a train and a lost purse on a bus ride. Please let me know if one really must be a New Yorker to appreciate this column.