dumpling

When I was in grade 10 I travelled to New Jersey via the Toronto Island Airport to see my best friend. I think the town was called Hasbrouck Heights and they had cigarette vending machines. It was a time in my life when I didn't care who I talked to - as long as they were listening. I talked and talked and talked to everyone I met. I thought I was insanely smart. One night I hopped into the front seat of a police car and told the cop, who was always asking the kids to move off the street, why I thought that cute New Jersey town was too fucking boring for me. I talked to him for an hour while his partner leaned on the car outside. The air smelled sweet like grass and the warm nights never got very dark. All the roads in Hasbrouck Heights gently slope. And I knew that I looked white middle class American and I talked white middle class American and maybe I even thought white middle class American, but all that warm summer suburbaness made me awkward and overly chatty. It made me think about all the stuff I know about a country I don't live in, and all the stuff I don't know about me.