Being clumped in with masses of my fellow citizens has never bothered me a bit: I'm a New Yorker, after all, through and through, and getting up close (if not personal) is just part of the gig. Sometimes I'd be traveling with John Ryerson, another Trinity student who commuted from Douglaston, and occasionally John and I would hook up with another classmate, Steven Weitzmann. Getting off the train, I'd walk through the crowded tunnels and catch the subway— the Seventh Avenue IRT, number 2 or 3 express— for the twenty-minute ride to the Upper West Side. Some of my greatest tennis triumphs, both in singles and doubles, would also take place there just a few years later, in the Masters tournament, just after Christmas. Then I'd catch the 7:20 train, show the conductor my monthly pass, and settle in for the thirty-minute ride to Penn Station in Manhattan.įor you out-of-towners, Penn Station is directly under Madison Square Garden, which was a frequent destination for me as a kid: the home of my beloved Knicks and Rangers the site of the first rock concert I ever attended (Grand Funk Railroad!) as well as of one of the highlights of my adolescence, the New York stop of Led Zeppelin's 1975 world tour. My mother was struggling to get me out of bed in my upstairs room at 255 Manor Road, Douglaston, Queens, enduring an early-morning grumpiness— sorry, Mom!— caused by the prospect of a commute my own kids couldn't even begin to imagine.įirst came the fifteen-minute walk to the Douglaston train station— a walk I made every morning until the glorious day I turned seventeen and finally got my driver's license. In my mind's eye, I was fifteen again, just embarking on my four years at the Trinity School on Manhattan's Upper West Side. And as my kids fought for that extra minute or two of sleep before the reality of a school day set in, memories of my own boyhood bubbled up.

I smiled as I moved from room to room, mussing hair, scratching backs, patting cheeks.

Our house is the top four floors the kids' rooms are on floors one, two, and three.

I think about that, appreciate that, every day.

We live at the top of a big apartment building on Central Park West, in what I happen to believe is the best apartment in the most beautiful building in New York City. I quickly hung up the phone, let my wife Patty sleep, and dragged myself out of bed to go rouse five of my six children— Ava, the baby of the family at two, was still too young to be part of this daily ritual. And so September 11, 2001, began like any other morning in the McEnroe household, with my seven A.M.

You Cannot Be Serious by John McEnroe