Ghetto Suburbs

Playing cops and robbers, freeze tag, and duck-duck-goose kept my mind busy kept me from noticing the world around me. Sometimes I wonder if that’s all parents are trying to do in those early years. How can I keep you happy? How can I keep you hidden from the pain waiting outside?

Ignorance might feel like bliss, but it’s not a vacation we could ever take. There’s no return ticket home.

The neighborhood I grew up in was full of lower middle-class families white, Puerto Rican, and first-generation Vietnamese and Filipino immigrants. A couple of black families lived there too. Everybody was one foot in the suburbs and two paychecks away from the hood. My best friend Alex called it the ghetto suburbs, and honestly, that’s exactly what it was. A melting pot of people trying to stay afloat, all chasing their version of the American Dream.

That dream was what our parents wanted to believe in. But us kids? We had our own dreams. We weren’t thinking about mortgages or promotions. We were dreaming about robbing banks and not getting caught.

Our parents worked long hours electricians, construction workers, correctional officers. Most of them barely had time for themselves. And while we respected their hustle, we didn’t want to be like them. We didn’t want a life of tired evenings, a beer, or a glass of wine to take the edge off. It felt like they were stuck in a game they didn’t even want to play.

So we made a silent promise to ourselves: we’d find a way out. We’d do everything we could to break free.