I’ve lived in Carrollton for the majority of my life; from when I was a wee little lad to now. My family moved about four times, all the while still being close to the city, whether that’d be in or outside city limits. No matter where we moved, we always stayed in Carollton… mainly because me and my little brother didn’t want to change schools and that probably made our parents happy knowing they won’t have to go through the whole process of enrolling us to a new school, but I digress. All of this to say that I’ve only known one town my whole life, which is Carrollton.

…And I’ll be honest when I say this, but I don’t really know much of this city.

Let me be more specific, I don’t really know much of Adamson Square, the city’s downtown. I’m going to be completely honest again, I don’t leave the house a whole lot, nor does anyone in my family. I mean, why would we? We don’t have the time to either go to the park or a restaurant to just hang out; almost every one of us have jobs to support the family, each with different days off, and me and my little brother have school work to complete at home. Even during the weekends and weeks off school, we still don’t go anywhere. And don’t even get me started on vacations, we’ve never gone outside the city for several days because then who’ll take care of our dogs, cats, and chickens? Certainly not my uncle, that’s for sure.

And now that I’ve become semi-used to this new employed lifestyle, It’s sort of made me reminisce of how things were back then – not just how life was like as a kid, but in the old neighborhood I used to live in., thanks to what I’ve been learning.

While listening to the episode “U is for Urbanism” from the “99% Invisible” podcast in AP Lang, one part of the said podcast has stuck with me ever since. Anna Kode, features reporter for the New York Times who made a special appearance in the episode, mentioned how many people reached out to her after her article about popular kids show “Sesame Street” urban design, basically saying “…I think this is why I always wanted to live in a walkable neighborhood. It was because I watched Sesame Street growing up and that kind of shaped my idea of how life should be.”

Now, me personally, I never really grew up watching Sesame Street, I was more of a Barney kid (according to both my parents’ recountings), but after spending a good 20 minutes scouring the internet and looking through images of the neighborhood sets used in the show, I get where these people were coming from;wanting to live in a neighborhood where you actually just leave your apartment and walk to the nearest convenience store and then go hang out at your friends house, or maybe even going to the park together and playing with the other kids.

Now, the old apartments I used to live in were definitely not as cool as the sets in Sesame Street, but it sure did make me look back at the times I lived there with a bit more fondness and appreciation. In that neighborhood, literally every kid knew each other, we all sat in the same bus, went to the same schools and even had the same hang out spots, whether it was the laundry, the mail boxes, the park, or the trees near the park. We would all ride our bikes together and just have a good time. But obviously, as time went on, most of them would move out of these apartments, and so did we.

And all of this just made me realize how much I actually… missed being so close to everyone. I mean, even the older cool kids liked hanging out with us in those times, like, that’s how close all of us were.

So, what’s all of this got to do with whatever point I’m trying to make here?

Well, all of these passages we’ve been reading in class, the scavenger hunt, the interviews we did, and the walking tour we did to Adamson Square… actually made me want to go outside even more, just to experience the wondrous life of nature and the outdoors to feel at ease, just to take a break from everything. While on our trip to the Square, there were many places I never even noticed were here – Like, what do you MEAN I’ve lived here my whole life and just NOW I’ve realized there were more than one cafe? Or the fact there was a newspaper clipping on one of the buildings?

I was mainly looking forward to this trip just to be able to enter the Vinyl Frontier, but as our class headed back to the school building, it left me wanting to explore my surroundings; the complete desire to just be outside and leave the world of the internet and technology behind because unfortunately, I spend most of my week hunched over on a chair that could rival that of shrimp’s posture, working on my laptop in a dimly lit room until dawn.

So, having two uninterrupted hours of just being able to explore the one area I just pass whenever me or my parents drive… was a very euphoric experience.

All of it made me appreciate this little city of ours a lot more. How fun it’d be just to roam around the stores and buildings, having the time of my life without a care in the world. Because, I’m going to be honest once more (this is the last time I’ll be saying that phrase again, I promise), It’d be nice not having to do school work everyday and just have some good old me time.

Eh, who knows, only time will tell – But one thing is for certain, I just really… like REALLY… need a breath of fresh air…