{"id":628,"date":"2017-10-05T16:34:07","date_gmt":"2017-10-05T21:34:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/?p=628"},"modified":"2017-10-05T16:34:07","modified_gmt":"2017-10-05T21:34:07","slug":"the-suburbs-pt-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/2017\/10\/05\/the-suburbs-pt-1\/","title":{"rendered":"the suburbs (pt. 1)"},"content":{"rendered":"

the suburbs \/\/ arcade fire<\/a><\/p>\n

i spent seven years of my life in the suburbs. in a town where everyone knew everyone’s name and your classmate’s mom was probably your first grade teacher. but\u00a0i didn’t know everyone’s names, and my teachers were never my friends’ moms.<\/span><\/p>\n

i grew up in the suburbs,\u00a0but i didn’t grow up in suburbia.<\/p>\n

to me, suburbia is a feeling. something you have to grow up in to actually feel. in my town, suburbia is the kids who have memberships to the country club. they’re the kids who actually throw parties when their parents aren’t home. they’re the kids who will wake up at ungodly hours of the morning to go hunting on weekends. they’re the kids who ride their bikes around town and get milkshakes at velvet cream on friday nights.<\/p>\n

these are the kids who lived next door to each other all their lives. these are the kids who knew each other all their lives, grew up together like family.<\/p>\n

but i didn’t know anybody. i never had the pool parties or the friends to bike around town with or to go to velvet cream with. i didn’t even learn how to ride a bike until i moved to the suburbs because the gentrified small-town pavements were finally safer than the cracked concrete of my old town.<\/p>\n

one time in my old house in my old town, my brother and i made friends with some kids who lived in the apartments behind our house.\u00a0my parents built a fence and we never saw them again.<\/p>\n

but even in this new town where i thought i could finally be a kid, i couldn’t walk around my neighborhood unless my brother went with me, which he never wanted to do. i didn’t know anyone to play outside with, and i didn’t know how to find them.\u00a0i always wanted to find a home in the suburbs. i wanted the pool parties and the bike rides and the familiarity of people who felt like family, but i didn’t have that feeling everyone else grew up with.<\/span><\/p>\n

there was one girl in this new neighborhood that was my age; she was the first friend i made in this new town. in fourth and fifth grade, i would go over to her house after school, and we would ride our bikes around the neighborhood. with her, i thought i was finally starting to feel suburbia seeping into my bones.<\/p>\n

one day, she stopped answering the door. i haven’t ridden a bicycle since.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

the suburbs \/\/ arcade fire i spent seven years of my life in the suburbs. in a town where everyone knew everyone’s name and your classmate’s mom was probably your first grade teacher. but\u00a0i didn’t know everyone’s names, and my teachers were never my friends’ moms. i grew up in the suburbs,\u00a0but i didn’t grow … Continue reading “the suburbs (pt. 1)”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=628"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1045,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628\/revisions\/1045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}