Schools

I love living near a school. I should say, I love living near a school that is 4-5 blocks away. It reminds me a lot of when I was growing up and we lived near my elementary, junior and high schools. Some thoughts from my childhood:

- having handy access to a playground. I would hang out on the swing sets even as an adolescent. When I was in elementary school, we would smoke on the jungle gym. As an adult, we drank. We also had all of the ball fields to run around in and go sledding (on a seriously pathetic little hill..I wouldn't even call it a hill) on.

- For me, the access to basketball and tennis courts made all of the difference in my childhood. Hot or cold, I was usually at the basketball court. As I got older, I would head over and play tennis with my older sister or some friends. I don't know what I would have done without the ability to play basketball so close to home. I think it saved my childhood. As I became even older, my dad taught me how to hit a golf ball in the fields behind the elementary school.

- The ability to walk to/from school and also skip school and take a nap. Yes, I used to walk out of journalism class and go home for 40 minutes for a nap. I admit that I also used to come home and drink during school hours. I was not the healthiest teenager. In my early years, I could ride my big wheel before school or during my lunch hour.

- I don't want to hear anything from my sisters but I didn't always enjoy the freedom of walking to school. My dad would sometimes give me a ride to high school even though we really didn't live that far. They said I was spoiled. I am still convinced it was so my dad would make sure I actually went to school. Either way, I didn't care for the ride unless it was really cold. It also affected my drinking before school during 11th grade. Wow. I was a really messed up kid.

- The freedom of living so close to school events - the homecoming bonfire, homecoming parades, basketball or football games. I was able to sleep later because I didn't have to ride a bus.

In many ways, I felt that my friends and I ruled the neighborhood. There were very few kids my age who lived in the neighborhood. I think I had two friends who lived around me. Loren was my best friend and we definitely felt that the neighborhood was under our control. We didn't pay attention to our gender difference until I started beating him in basketball. We knew every corner of the neighborhood and spent a lot of time hanging out around the elementary school. Kristin became my friend as I hit my upper elementary years. We felt that our school patrol years in 5th grade went beyond leading younger kids across the street before school. We were old. We knew everything. We also had to stop smoking before 5th grade because we were almost caught by the school janitor in our hiding spot that was in the trees outside the cafeteria.

As an adult, I would walk around the schoolyard and feel like a giant. Everything seemed so small. Why did I think the slide was hundred feet tall? The basketball rim seemed so much shorter. As I walk around Grant Park High School and Grant Park, I keep remembering all of these childhood memories. It feels so good because I always felt my childhood was always a little sad, yet those are some of the memories that I love.