Week Five - The Death and Life of Great American Cities

I was a walker of streets. I was born in New York City. I lived in Chelsea till we moved out to Paris for a year. I remember the playground where I ran around while my nanny Sophie watched me. This is my youngest memory, though I am told we lived somewhere else even before that small apartment in Chelsea with the wrought iron gate and rose bush. I was told that I once left the house with my little red boots and walked four blocks to the grocery store to meet the people there. I wonder how my parents ever found me. Beyond this, I struggle to relate to the concept of bullies in playground. I was picked on growing up in Wellesley where we settled a lot, but not for lunch money or pride, but because I was a big fat kid. The other kids didn't need a better excuse than that in the snotty town called Wellesley. I think this was good for me though. It helped give me a sense of right and wrong, of fairness outside my own desires. It help gave me something to struggle over personally, an internal image I wished to overcome. And eventually I did. I grew tall, ever so damn tall, and my weight just faded into me. I'll never forget being a fat little boy though on the playground, or the way I was pudgy. It's like how so many girls still believe their fat when they're not, except I have enough sense left to know I'm not fat really. Hell, girls have turned me down for not being chubby enough, which I consider bizarre.

So now, beyond this I cannot relate to the life of city streets, sadly. I can relate to parks though, having often visited a large number near my home. That was one of my favorite parts of Wellesley: suburbia covered in sprawling plains of grassy plateau. You could run for minutes on grass in the large football/soccer/track field a few blocks from my house. There was a huge park called Centennial that I didn't even know existed in my town till my first girlfriend in late high school took me there (I would learn later that some dear friends mine, Analise and Boner, had gone here at night with another two friends when they both tried their first tab of acid). But there were parks hidden everywhere! Behind the downtown stores were little fields, behind every elementary school was a massive field (many of which I played ultimate Frisbee on). There was one in front of town hall, even the gaudy country club greens at night were a field really. Wellesley though never had the same problems as unattended city parks I think. Most of the things that happened beyond kids being simply dumb, were more kids just looking for a way to push boundaries and limits and have a good time. Some kids would go out and do drugs as mentioned. Others like me would drive around with friends, following cops and finding unique sites to enjoy like the oversized lawn chair on Route 9. Others drank (and crashed), and others simply talked. But the point of this is that while these are actions most communities would abhor, it felt normal to me. It felt part of growing up, and many of things kids do, they do simply for fun, to feel alive, and to experience. Not to bother or harm someone else. I like to think I still carry that sense of doing things for fun and experience, without any intention to truly bother other people.