My eyes were still stinging with imaginary pinkeye at 4am. I groaned, resigned to watching movies on my iPad until everyone else woke up. Or...White Castles for breakfast! 15 minutes later, I was inhaling the cheeseburgers of my youth. God bless the guy who thought of the 24 hour drive-through.
I had a lot of time on my hands, so I drove around Columbus, my hometown. I left Columbus shortly after I graduated from Ohio State, and I rarely visit. My sister and I had visited our childhood home the day before, so I set off for the homes that followed. My homes.
Post-parental divorce, I grew up poor. My go-to illustration is that in the sixth grade, I had four shirts. On Fridays, I had to decide which shirt to repeat, and I carefully repeated on a rotation, as if I would be more ridiculed if I wore a shirt four times in two weeks instead of merely three times. I remained poor until I left Columbus for grad school.
I knew this, of course. I knew solvent people didn't write personal checks against one another in a ponzi scheme to delay needing the rent money for as long as possible. But until last weekend, I don't think I fully felt it.
Everywhere I went, I saw perfectly unremarkable places that once had metaphorical "No Johns Allowed" signs in their windows. This included restaurants and Ohio State games, sure, but also mundane places. That's the expensive doughnut shop, I thought. I couldn't afford to go there. That's the car wash where people with nice cars went. That's...
You get the idea. Everywhere I went last weekend, I was reminded of just how poor I'd been.
The dogs and I went to Maddie's and my old apartment, the place where I balled with d'Andre and Mason. A crumpled box of Newports laid amid the filth in the hallway outside the apartment, and at some point, they gave up replacing the rims on our basketball court. And weeding it. We awkwardly used one of the cracks as the three-point line.
As I left my old neighborhood and slowly drove back to my present life, I was a bit numb. I was surprised how surprised I was about all the reminders of my poverty. I felt sheepish. And then I went to that doughnut store and bought my sister a dozen.
