Today was just another day in the sub/urbs. I had an interesting lil' mix of the suburban life and well, I live every day in urban life (you know, streets littered with an equal dose of churches and liquor stores, saints and sinners, "new urban lofts" and old homes falling apart at the hands of the overgrown sons living with, but not taking care of, their mommas).
My voyage to suburbia did not disappoint. My sister lives there so I take the 30-minute drive (well, more like ride--my car's a bit of a hooptie and 30 minutes sans radio or air conditioning or horsepower (my car has more like camel power) in Houston at any time of the year ain't cool so I usually have to hitch a ride with my sister or parents) and venture out that way from time to time. Today I was in her neighborhood, and at quite the suburban event--a one year old's birthday party! I was there with my two nephews (one and three). The party represented the suburbs well, replete with event planners, leis (the theme was a luau), blow up coconut palm trees, hot dogs, fries, pizza, fresh fruit, and suburban parents.
And my urban world never disappoints. Alcoholics and crackheads as neighbors, toothless grins greeting me in the middle of the day, and today, an effort to support Houston's public schools by riding around to collect what school district officials politely calls "no shows"--the kids that common folks who aren't official call truants or dropouts (or for probably a good number of the kids who have to leave school to make money to support a family, just hard workers). The effort was laudable, and while not the most strategic use of community or volunteer power (we were 8 volunteers descending on the homes of 4 kids at 8:00 in the morning), it was cool to traipse about Houston's 2nd ward with the hopes of returning a kid to school (though probably my even bigger hope of hopes was that we'd be returning them to a school worthy of having kids returned). The streets we hopped around were filled with peluquerias, "envia dinero rapido" signs hanging off of homes, and taquerias. It was cool.
The suburbs were filled with,trees, water fountains (not like school water fountains where the water doesn't come out so you almost have to eat the nozzle or slurp from it and your water tastes like metal--but water fountains that are worthy of being a part of the suburban landscape), neatly manicured school (and home) lawns, and families with children who behaved properly in public at the birthday party. My 3-year old nephew who lives with us in urban world acted, well, urban. He played with stuff that wasn't supposed to be played with, he was loud at the wrong times, he MC Hammered to the Bob Marley tunes that were theme-appropriate (but not necessarily Hammer appropriate), and played with the games as the event planners tried to pack them up.
Not much a point to this blog. But I guess that's the joy of a blog. No point needed!!!
Enjoy wherever you live--the suburbs or the urbs.
Love,
Me!
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2 comments:
Dodge introduces Charger hybrid - kind of
In my opinion, this is the coolest print ad I've seen since the "Lord Vader" ad for the 1994 Chevy Impala SS.
Don McClendon
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Had you not named a town I would've thought you were talking about here. That whole first paragraph is quite descriptive of conditions here. And our school systems are wacked out here and in major need of overhaul, so yeah we've got the drop outs too.
Keep after the bloggin...check ya later.
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