White volunteer tutor from Princeton: So imagine I'm trying out for the basketball team…
Black student #1: You play basketball?
Black student #2: Do you play tennis?
Black student #1: That's racist!
–Public High School, Queens
White volunteer tutor from Princeton: So imagine I'm trying out for the basketball team…
Black student #1: You play basketball?
Black student #2: Do you play tennis?
Black student #1: That's racist!
–Public High School, Queens
Grad student: I'm signing up for squash classes. I like squash, even though it's messed up my tennis playing.
Gay coworker: Oh, I approve of all the racket sports. Maybe I should play squash, too, since my wrists are not firm. (laughs)
–NYU Meyer Building
High school girl #1, eating Ben & Jerry's: I am PMSing so bad right now!
High school girl #2, eating Ben & Jerry's: I'm PMSing so bad right now! Actually, I'm not PMSing. I'm on the first period of my life!
–3rd Ave & 10th St
Overheard by: miss blanky-poo
Columbia student #1: She had a sex change. Or wait–what do you call it?
Columbia student #2: No–she came out.
Columbia student #1: Yeah, she came out. She speaks all these languages–Spanish, Italian, Brazilian…
–1 Train
Overheard by: Kyla
Student #1: I was on my way to work one morning, and I saw a live cockroach scurrying across the sidewalk in broad daylight.
Student #2: I thought that they don't like the light? I've only seen them at night and in subways.
Student #1: This was like a badass little rebel cockroach. I bet he got sick of being a slave to the darkness and dared to go where no cockroach has ever gone before. And all his cockroach friends were like “Don't do it, Jerry, no one's ever come back!” but they just couldn't hold him back.
–Lincoln Center, Fordham University
Overheard by: Fordham Student
Music teacher: So, how do you control the sound of a recorder?
Embarrassed teenage boy: Um… You put your fingers… Uh, in the hole. And the higher you want the sound to be, the more fingers you put in the hole.
Music teacher: Is there any other way to control the sound?
Embarrassed teenage boy: Well, the harder you blow, the faster the sound will come. And the softer you blow, the slower it'll come.
–Bard High School, Queens
Overheard by: Sunny
Wasted Columbia kid: Hey, did you just go to the game?
Sober Columbia girl: Yup.
Wasted Columbia kid: Me too! (pause) Who won?
–1 Train
Collegiate #1: I can't believe that asshole MTA called the cops on us.
Collegiate #2: Seriously, isn't it enough that we risked our lives crossing the subway tracks to get to the other side? Fuck that guy, we wasted $2.00 and then had to take a cab to escape the police.
–Columbia University
Sophomore #1: You are *not* allowed to pass out in the gutters!
Sophomore #2, deadpan: I didn't pass out. I laid down.
–Cooper Square & Astor Place
Loud student, looking at intricate homework assignment on projector: Who has the time to do that, seriously?!
Skater dude #1, muttering: Shit, I have the time to do that, I just spend it getting fucked up.
Skater dude #2: Shit man, we all do!
–School of Visual Arts
Overheard by: art school has bros too
