Home Sweet Home

When you are growing up you hate where you live. The city you live in is considered the source of all of your problems and angst. My mom was instrumental in choosing the city we eventually lived in. We had been living in Irving, TX but she wasn't happy with the school system they had there. Around the time I was about to enter kindergarten many things came together. My family was not very wealthy, and to live in Coppell, TX, an upper-middle class suburb of Dallas, would have been out of the question otherwise

In short, the economy fell through. My uncle Ed had been living in some condominiums in Coppell and a few units suddenly came available at a very reasonable price. My mom didn't go to my father at first. Instead, she went to my grandfather, and showed him the numbers and the rationale. With his blessing, she was able to convince my dad to go and see the available units. It was a cold winter day, and two things still stand out in my mind. I remember there being a shoe frozen in some ice next to the back porch, and I remember the person showing us the unit saying it would be "41."

I thought the new condominium would cost us forty-one dollars. I thought it was a bargain, and so did my parents, because we moved in just in time to register me for kindergarten at W.W.W. Pinkerton Elementary. Probably the best thing to ever happen to me beyond my control was my mother ensuring me an education through Coppell ISD.

I remember when I was in middle school and everyone was so excited to go to high school. I distinctly remember someone saying, "Your high school years are the best years of your life."

Well, I sure hope not. I don't know why society has structured the education system in such a way that they ramp up the pressure right when everyone's hormones are starting to go crazy. I'll save the details for a later post, but everyone growing up in Coppell called it "the Bubble". In fact, one of the teachers I had had gone to Coppell High School, lived in Coppell all his life, and will probably live there his whole life. I can't say I was dying to get out of there, but I was definitely happy to move on to college.

When I began to think of where I wanted to go to pharmacy school I had only three options at the time. Amarillo, Austin, and Houston. For reasons that I can't remember, Houston was my number one choice. Perhaps it was because I had family in Galveston and felt like I was more familiar with it. Boy, I was wrong. Galveston is worlds apart from Houston. It could have been the fact that they had a hockey team. That turned out terribly as well (another post for another day). Perhaps it was Ms. Paige Pitman, who came to UT Arlington and was one of the best school representatives that came and spoke to our Pre-Pharmacy club. Turned out, she was leaving the College of Pharmacy as soon as I was coming in. Most likely it was because Houston is home to the largest medical center in the world.

I returned my confirmation letter as soon as I was accepted, and canceled my interviews at Texas Tech and University of Texas. I was going to Houston.

But where would I live? By the time I got my acceptance letter, it was already very late in the housing application process. I really wanted my own apartment. My father really wanted me to live on campus. We clashed heads severely, as we often did growing up. I was financially held under his thumb.

I was not allowed to choose where I lived. I ended up at 2111 Holly Hall, a block from Reliant Stadium, in the Medical Center. At first, I was ecstatic that I had somehow gotten my way and had my own apartment. For a while I was blind to what became obvious as soon as a tropical storm rolled through the area during pharmacy school orientation.

It is a dump in the middle of a ghetto. 598 square feet of shitty, dirty beige carpet, 30 year old windows that don't close tightly, and a sliding glass door that leaks when it rains. Picture a bucket and a metal bowl that I have to keep next to the door to catch rainwater before it soaks the aforementioned shitty carpet. The hot water heater broke within a month of me living here. The A/C within two years. It is difficult to open and close the door when it is damp, and when I first moved in the electric bills for this tiny place were almost $200 dollars a month. The door jamb for the front door is rotting and starting to separate from the outside of the building. Sometimes when you open it and walk through small chunks of wood fall down on you. When we go away for more than a couple days, when we come back the apartment smells stale and musty.

One of my neighbors has COPD, and is evidently on disability. He can be found in his wheelchair in the walkway between buildings, coughing, hacking, and talking to himself. Nay, yelling to himself in a slightly demonic and very intimidating voice. Other times he can be found sitting in front of the Valero across the street. No matter where I see him, I am deeply unsettled.

Another neighbor is a douchebag in a piece of shit black Integra. When he has to add water to his beater's radiator, he tosses the water bottle he used on the ground. I am usually the one that picks it up.

Yet another neighbor, the one that shares a wall with us, smokes so much that sometimes the smell seeps into our bathroom. We can't open the front window to let in fresh air, because he also will sometimes sit out front and smoke. I have actually had someone ask me if I smoke when they came into our apartment.

In short, I am sick and tired of living here and can't wait to move back to Dallas. All those years where I was sick and tired of living in the same city, the same bubble, and I would absolutely love to move back. I was reminded of this fact when I went back for Thanksgiving holiday. I was so deeply moved to be back home, that I made sure to take the time to enjoy all the little things.

Every time I go home, we pass by the skyline and I can't help but take pictures of it like a tourist. When we recently went up there to get Ben a new car I noticed that the lights of my favorite building weren't on. I always check what is going on at the American Airlines Center, just in case I might try to catch a hockey game. A real hockey game.

In Coppell, Ben never locked his door during the day whether they were home or not. When we get there it is always for us and we walk right in. I could never do that where I live right now. In fact, last night I was so paranoid that someone had stolen our brand new Camaro I grabbed the keys and hit the 'lock' button to hear it honk through the defective sliding glass door. I might be paranoid because one weekend morning I was woken up to knocking at my door. When I looked through the peephole I saw a sniveling girl. I opened the door and she proceeded to ask me if I had seen anyone break into her car and steal her laptop she had hidden on the back floorboard. I told her I hadn't-- I had been asleep. She moved on to the next door. And that's when I realized my doormat was missing. In its place was an empty Taco Cabana cup.

Someone has since offered the explanation that someone used my doormat to hide the laptop they were stealing as they walked away. The bottom line, is that I live in a ghetto after having lived in one of those All-American cities where everyone knows each other and looks out for each other.

Here, the only reason I pay attention is because I like matching up people I see to the cars they drive and the apartment they live in. Not because I want to watch out for them, but because I want to watch out for me.

Home sweet home. Yeah right. Not until I get out of here.