When I was a little girl, we lived in a building by Koreatown in Los Angeles. It was here where I was raised by mostly my grandparents, in the two bedroom apartment numbered 102. In this building I met my first life-long friend, had my first crush, and it was here where I fell in love with writing. I look back at my life and wonder how things would've been different if my childhood was spent anywhere else. I see my younger sibling’s lives and I can't imagine spending a day in their shoes. Their childhood is so different.
I remember the summers my cousin and I spent in front of the building skating and causing mischief, or throwing rocks…which we did a lot. We used to go onto the rooftop and throw rocks at people passing by for no reason other than for our entertainment which I can’t justify. This went on until we got caught by the manager and he began to lock the door that led to the roof. We would also throw rocks from the playground to an apartment on the third floor where the coolest older girl in the building lived asking her to come out and play, even though we could’ve just knocked on her door. I passed by this building a couple of years ago and saw it so differently. There as tagging on the sidewalk that ran down the main street, the colors had faded, and nobody was outside.
In my neighborhood, where I live now, I only ever see the same three kids playing outside. I've worked with kids, and at my current job (as well as others I've had before) I'm always surrounded by children. It amazes me how different their generation is compared to mine. I'm sure that my parents felt that way about my generation, and their parents of theirs. It's interesting to see how times change.
I love thinking about how it was so easy to not care about what people thought of you when we were little. While my grandparents maintained this residence for the longest time, my parents and I moved many times, but somehow my mother and I always ended back there with my grandmother, among the same neighbors who knew your life story, because back then we actually knew our neighbors, I have no idea who I’m living next to now.
I wonder if when my sister (the youngest of us all) gets to be my age, if she’ll look back and have nostalgic memories of how amazing childhood is. I wonder if she’ll miss the innocence, if she’ll find her passion before she realizes the harsh realities of this world and it stalls her from following her dreams. I hope I never forget the past. Besides all of the things that went wrong in my life, remembering the happiest days is great. I wonder if after it being so easy, now that life is more complicated, it’ll ever feel the way it did back when we lived in our small yet humble number 102.
