BioWriMo Year Seven: the Neighborhood

Then I turned six. Around this time I moved to a different neighborhood. We lived on Beaumont Avenue. It’s the first house I can remember more than one room of.

Two stories, loft beds (those were SO COOL), in a real neighborhood with real neighbor kids but also near some undeveloped desert ripe for exploration. There was a neighborhood pool, fake trees in the front and as far as I knew, nice neighbors. I guess we were pretty financially stable at the time but it’s not like I had any knowledge of how things were. ’96 and ’97 were good Clinton economic years so maybe that has to do with it.

I remember us being connected to another neighborhood via a “wash”. Basically, Arizona is in the middle of the Sonoran Desert, meaning that when it does rain it rains a LOT. Our street was covered in flat pavement, flat roofs (it’s a Southwestern thing) and generally not absorbent stuff. The wash was a grated alley that let water (and small children) through but stopped cars from easily navigating between neighborhoods.

My brother had some friends on the other side of the wash and I, being a little brother, had to come along. There was a guy whose name was Leo or Lawrence or something and another guy whose name started with a D or S or something. Bad memory, eh? I remember the latter kid was Mormon. For those of you who aren’t from the United States, specifically the Mid- and Southwest, Mormonism is a sect of Christianity that is just different enough for us to consider separate. So it was odd now, knowing someone who didn’t believe or at least follow along with the same religion as us. It showed a bit, I think, that we were sheltered. We had grown up with an NES and a Sega Genesis and L--- had an Nintendo 64. We (or at least I if not Aaron) had never heard of or taken part in anything relating to politics and I very specifically remember hearing a joke about the Lewinsky scandal, although that must have been later, I guess.

I also remember playing with my cousins out in the desert. It wasn’t a far walk to one of their houses and we’d often go there and to Walgreens to play and hang out. So that was cool.

Years are hard and I have a lot to do today, so that’s all until I turn seven.