For nearly forty years, I’ve been trying to find out the truth of something that happened to me—and I’m starting to realize I may never know that truth. Recently, I decided to pitch This American Life on the idea of doing a story on the incident, thinking they could either find out what really happened, or failing that might be interested in pulling together a themed episode on multiple people who have mysteries about their lives which may never be solved. And when I mentioned on social media that I’d done this, a few of you were intrigued, and wanted to know more about this mysterious event.

Since it’s unlikely This American Life will be interested, and since, who knows, perhaps one of you could solve this mystery, I figured, why not share it here?

This incident occurred in the mid to late ’70s, prior to November 2, 1978. I say this because that’s the date on which I began keeping an almost daily diary, and when I searched through my entries for a contemporaneous accounting from then until the day I left New York in 1985, I found nothing. I would surely have written about this, so it had to have happened earlier, probably in 1975 or 1976, when I would have been 20 or 21.

One afternoon, I was sitting in front of the McGraw-Hill building on Sixth Avenue with my back to a giant, gleaming triangle that tracks solstices and equinoxes. (If you live in New York, you’ll know exactly where I mean.) I often hung out on that spot, because my father was an Art Director for McGraw-Hill, and I’d wait there until it was time for us to have lunch, or for him to get off work. But on that day, something unusual happened. (more…)