Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Those Were the Days?

What seems like a long time ago, but wasn`t really, I wrote some short pieces about when I was growing up in New Jersey, and I had a good time doing so. So, I thought I would see if I could reach back into the murky depths of my muddled mind to jot down a few more mundane moments in my life.

I went to high school at St. Peter`s Prep in Jersey City, and took the train from Rutherford every day. I lived about six or seven blocks from the train station in my hometown, but never seemed to find a way to leave enough time to be able to just walk to get the train. Every morning, with about 5 minutes before the train arrived, I would bolt out of my front door and streak down my block, down a short hill, and take a left, past the commuters waiting for the 190 bus to Port Authority and head straight down Orient Way. The whole time I ran, I kept repeating the same words: not yet. It was an attempt to will the train to slow down and not screech to a halt beside the platform before a got there, panting and disheveled. Sometimes I beat the train, and sometimes the train beat me. I remember the satisfying feeling of sitting beside some guy in a suit that had probably been on the train longer than I had been awake...since Suffern or something like that. But I also vividly recall watching the train pull up at the station while I was still almost 3 blocks away, and feeling like crying.

The next morning, the routine repeated itself. One positive side effect: it was hard to get fat.

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