I'm not sure if I'm a New Yorker or a New Englander. Born in Brooklyn almost 31 years ago, I lived - up till I was 17 - in a 5 building, 23 storied apartment complex, on the border of Coney Island (famous for their Astroland Park including the Cyclone Rollercoaster, the Original Nathan's Hotdog Stand, and ghetto-ish neighborhoods) and Brighton Beach (known as the setting of Neil Simon's Brighton Beach Memoirs, and older Jewish and newer Russian neighborhoods).
I was the pleasant surprise, a second son for my parents, born less than a year after my brother Jeremy (who used to reference me as the "mistake"). In many ways, we were like twins, with almost the same set of friends until high school. We shared a bedroom until I moved out to go to a college that wasn’t within a short drive. I moved to the Binghamton NY area just prior to my Junior year leaving Stony Brook and Long Island behind. Comparing personalities, I was more dominant then Jeremy, more talkative, and probably more annoying to most people. He was the sport freak, and the oldest child in both sides of the family. A little over two years later, my sister was born. I recall most of her adolescence was spent crying. Sabrina was generally the over-emotional sibling; I’m almost a bit jealous of it. She was the first female in the generation, and everyone loves little girls – my sister was ridiculously adorable. Jonathan (aka Jon, Jonton, and young one) was born about eight years afterwards. He had a little bit of trouble recognizing he wasn’t the same age as his older siblings. Smart and cocky, athletic and grounded, he’s probably the most well rounded of all of us, but has the most baggage as well.
The schools I attended in Brooklyn: P.S. 100, Junior High School 303 (George C. Tilyou), and Abraham LincolnHigh School, were all in easy walking distance of my home. I have strange infrequent memories of my primary and secondary school experiences in Brooklyn, typically mixed with episodes of being picked on, the occasional wooing my female classmates, and dawning recognitions that I was different (foreshadowing) from many of my male peers. I grew up with the same classmates from Kindergarten until the end of the 11th grade; we were tracked, and it wasn’t easy to move out of the tracks.
During the summer prior to my senior year of high school, my family moved to Coram in Long Island, NY. I don’t remember being terribly distraught about leaving the microcosm I lived in for the last 16 or so years. It could have been the mugging that took place when I was robbed of 20 dollars, or that Jeremy had his arm cut by a guy wielding a knife (and then had his coat stolen a week or so later), or the fact that my school had bars on the windows and were in the process of installing metal detectors, or any host of reasons that I block from memory (trauma protection).
Coram was the opportunity to start a bit fresh, to assert a little independence in public. I mentioned earlier that I’m gregarious, but until my senior year, it was never in school. I was book smart, with a little bit of street smart (getting mugged will help that come along).
...to be continued...