Sprung At Last

  • The Divorce
  • The Dating
  • Teen Tales
  • Dog Days
  • A Long Story
  • Cooking
You are here: Home / It's A Long Story / It’s A Long Story: City Girl

It’s A Long Story: City Girl

10.30.2014 by J. Doe // Leave a Comment

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

In Wisconsin, since my mother couldn’t drive, she relied on family to drive us everywhere; I sat in her lap in the front seat, held securely in her arms. Once, I opened the door of my aunt’s red Pinto while we were on the road, but we weren’t going very fast, and since I got yelled at by both my mother and my aunt, I never did that again.

In New York, my mother only needed a token to come and go as she pleased, since the subway would take you anywhere you might want to go, and so we rode the graffiti-covered cars, filled with strangers: People smoking cigarettes, teenagers with loud radios. Sometimes there were musicians playing violins or other instruments in the tunnels, and sometimes my mother would let me put a quarter into their violin case.

The parks in Wisconsin were different: I could walk a block to the playground near my grandparents’ house, and get the merry-go-round going really fast, and play with whatever neighbor kids happened to be there, or go find one of my friends, who all lived a door or two away. In New York, the playground behind my apartment building had a metal fence with sharp spikes on top, and the one at school that the first-graders used was on the roof of the five-story building. There both had black mats to cushion any rough landings, although they mostly served to smear knees and clothes with soot. After lunch, if it wasn’t raining, we played in the cement courtyard in the center of the school building, and if it was raining, we just stayed in the cafeteria.

Mostly, the kids were different. They made jokes I didn’t understand, like one boy who had the whole class laughing when he held up paste to his nose and announced he was sniffing glue, and played games I didn’t understand, like one called Catch Me Kiss Me where everyone laughed at me for actually kissing the boy I was assigned to chase, even though I had been told that I was supposed to.

Categories // It's A Long Story

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Connect

  • Bluesky
  • Email
  • RSS
  • Substack

Subscribe to hear more from Sprung at Last

Loading

Top Posts & Pages

  • Momofuku's Ginger Scallion Sauce
  • Rhubarb Sour Cream Muffins
  • Fannie Farmer's Banana Bread
  • Blueberry Focaccia
  • Alice Waters' Roast Chicken & Herbs

Recent Posts

  • Herbert Hoover’s Sour Cream Cookies
  • Ricotta, Lemon, and Blackberry Muffins
  • Deborah Madison’s Potato and Chickpea Stew
  • Richard Nixon’s Chicken Casserole
  • A Room at the Inn, Part 5

Tag Cloud

apples baking bananas beans biking breakfast candy cheese chicken child support comfort food cookies dating dessert divorce holidays Idaho IVF jdate kitchen disasters marriage match.com meat okcupid orange pasta pets pixels prozac random thoughts recipes reflections Seattle single single parenting snack soup The Alumni The Departed The Foreigner vegan vegetarian vintage recipes weekend cooking Wisconsin

About Me

If you’re just jumping in, you might have some questions, which I’ve tried to answer here.

Legalese

Legal information is here
Web Analytics

Copyright © 2025 · Modern Studio Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in