Around the Way
It exists as the place in between the busy urban epicenter known as Broad Street, and it stretches back into the more silent and immobile residential areas where the speedy subways and buses are replaced by modest bikes and cars. It exists as the place where the warm smells from the bakeries leave your tongue damp and yearning then a few paces later, slowly it shifts and contorts itself to exist as the seemingly innumberable fast food restaurants (which with some incomprehensible rationale, the general population prefers!) Of our bullying, city life, it exists as an edge, whereupon we are to gain a true taste of life broken into its most basic elements, and perhaps one day has to offer, and perhaps one day, return to look around and give one repentant sigh wishing to return to that simplicity we took for granted. Finally, it exists as the oasis in a metropolis that foolishly moves too fast to savor its own limited existence. That is my neighborhood.
What
we were, and what we are to become, always stays with us, and, backwards as it
is, our latter selves wish nothing more than to return to simpler days of childhood
whilst our former selves want nothing more than to grow up as fast as possible
– an imprudent train of thought. However, it has already begun, as our present
selves find ourselves remembering the more peaceful days of life. Although many
different people may remember many different things, I sit here upon my stoop
and I think back to the days before the bar was built on the corner, and before
everyone was careless enough to grow up. I think back to a place called
Though
I spent many days in my earlier youth there, I probably could not tell you what
There were the hustlers: two twin boys whom we could never distinguish, always with a trick up their sleeves, and an open hand. Many a day they were outside trying to sell a Super Nintendo cartridge, wherein lay the kind of fantastic adventures and people who we would envy and spend days with, as if they were old friends – role models even - who we were seeing for the first time in ages. There was the kind-hearted guy who everyone looked up to, and went to when they were in need of answers for their problems. He strode, unbothered by things around us that drove us insane, and although we loved him as a friend, we hated him for his perfection. There was the intelligent joker, who probably knew the most of us all, as far as the world went, always with some deviously brilliant plot in the works. There were the sisters whom looked as identical to one another as the hustlers who lived across from them. They were always in some kind of hot water but uncaring. There are so many more faces, voices, and personalities, that I could not possibly list them all here in detail.
Who I was in all of this mismatched madness, I do not truly know. Perhaps, you’d call me the smart one (book smarts mind you!) Then, of course, there was the six and seven year olds who idolized us, for we were the kings and queens of that block everyday from until the sunlight finally submitted and gave out.
Oh, and then there was the best part of it all- curveball! Somehow, someway, someone would get a big red ball, and there would be teams, one on each side of the street. Sometimes, there even was a small kid, desperate to hang out with the cool kids, on the sidelines with eager eyes keeping the score. When it was your turn, your entire team looked on hungrily, and the team across the street, though they would be your best friends in the world any other day, would try their best to throw you off and jinx you as you threw the ball with the intent of making it ricochete with a “boing!” off the corner of the pavement, and come back to you. If you threw it, and got it to bounce once off of the opponents side of the field, and then back to your side before hitting the initial side once again, it was three whole points (on a side note, I don’t recall any of us pulling off this tremendous feat!)
There were the crisp and cool autumn nights we wished would never go away when we sat on a step imagining what we would be like as teenagers, wondering exactly why men and women acted so strangely around each other as adults, and even imagining ourselves as fabulous superheroes, loved and known by everyone around. There was the awkwardness of our parents, not so oblivious of our differences, speaking with one another, and the discontented sighs emitting from our tiny lips when our friends’ parents would relay the phone message from our own house telling us it was time to go home. Through all of the confusion of trying to process outside life, and trying valiantly to get past the last boss in Zelda: Link’s Awakening, one underlying theme remained clear through it all: this was the secret kingdom of the children, and as long as your voice still sounded like that of a chipmunk, you were safe here and you could stay as long as you’d like with just an imagination and some time on your hands.
Presently, I reminisce and note how things have changed over that short span of time. I observe the twins, and the sisters all as delinquents, and frown remembering my best friends don’t live here anymore because they moved the second the bar was built on the corner. I know now that wannabe gangs now have invaded our little kingdom, and somehow, there aren’t any children left, only eight year old girls or seven year old boys who resemble our current ages so closely, physically, and mentally, that it sends a chill up my spine.
Despite every
desperate attempt to get the whole group together it never seems to fall back
into place and feel right again like a puzzle with mismatched pieces. We all
realize with a solemn sigh that we can never go back. Those memories, however,
are haunting me without relenting. So many instances I’ve found myself wishing
that they weren’t memories and that I
could run back to