When I was a Kid

Essay by StepCollege, UndergraduateA+, September 1996

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When I was a kid we left the dirty streets of Brooklyn, New York for the quieter suburban streets of Connecticut. We moved into a large house in Norwalk, Connecticut. Norwalk is the sort of town that dreams of being a big city but will always be just another small port on the Connecticut coastline. Like out of some horror story, the south side of town offers plenty of frightening images: ghettos, drug dealers, prostitutes, graffiti, and even young urban professionals. The south end was a popular place to work, but when the day ended, these young men and woman got into their BMWs, Porsches, and other toys and drove to safe ground. Most found their way to surrounding towns: Westport, Wilton, New Canaan, and others. Other people, like my parents, crossed town through East Norwalk to our home in the northern end of town. Sometimes I would hear my father boast to far off relatives that we lived in a nice residential neighborhood (otherwise known as 'the good area') In most horror stories, as the hero approaches some haunted house (or some other terror) you can shout, 'Don't go in there! Stay away!' People moving into Norwalk have no such luck; they move into the charming town without a clue of it's underlying sickness and disagreeable citizens.

One of my first discoveries was the river that passed through the middle of town. I was only a kid, maybe ten, when I started fishing by the edge of the river. It wasn't easy finding the perfect location; this was a place where I would want to be alone, a place to get away from the unhappiness that would spread like fire through my home on occasion.

This time away was possibly the most important thing to me then. When...