safety school + iPeople

today, i walked by this elementary school by my old apartment called the nettlehorst school. the school is plopped right in the middle of lakeview/boystown. it's a neat community where there are both many new traditional families eating brunch, and the Gay Caribou (it is actually called that, it's the gayest Caribou Coffee in the nation). the school is an old chicago-y building, with cut-outs of flowers and snowflakes pasted to the window in summer and winter, respectively.

little kids were on the traditional chicago playlot, a paved blacktop patch with swings or something else america likes, but much smaller than your average midwestern playground with "Big Toy", the "Bubble", a "turtle" and the like. these kids were tooling around on a variation of a trike, and it struck me that these kids were in safety school.

safety school is probably one of the first real memories i have. everyone says they remember things earlier ('i remember my first christmas!", "i remember being born!", etc.), but i don't know if i buy it. i certainly think it's possible to remember things earlier than i did. i also think that there's lots of things you are told & retold- and as an adult, you get the sensation that you remember it... even though what you remember is hearing it, not acually feeling it all the way. kinda like the feeling when you have deja vu.

at worthington estates, when i was 4 or 5, i would get dropped off for safety school. i think it was a little earlier than noon, and it was in late summer. i skipped preschool, so safety school was the first thing i really learned in an academic setting, and i was hooked. you ride a tricycle around a marked path, pedaling through the roads of safety town. you learn to stop at stop signs, go at green lights, to look both ways, to find important buildings. it's essentially a kiddo's driver's ed.

i tried really hard to ace safety school, and since i was uber-shy as a wee one, i put my nose to the grindstone and concentrated hard on everything but social aspects (this will come into play someday, inversely). today, i saw a few kids that looked exactly like i must've: focused, driven, serious about safety, unflinching at other kids. i could've stood there forever.

later, i was also pissed at myself. i was pissed because i finally came to the realization that my iPod has made everything - yes, everything - a profound experience. i love it. i love the damn little thing, and i hate myself for loving it. for instance, at the time walking by safety school, i was listening to the kind-of gut-wrenching garden state soundtrack, where every phrase may as be a metaphor for anything scenic. did it make me have more of a sensory reaction? yep. it's a JOKE.

see a flower poking through a fence, while listening to "Lovely Day" by Bill Withers? great! life is glorious- right, iPod? see that elderly gentlemen, hunched over like the letter C, shuffling down the street? how amazing that i'm mulling over "Old Man", by Neil Young! you said it, iPod - i AM a lot like you were! see that homeless guy taking a dump? fantastic! wait, let me just shuffle... hold on... i'm sure i've got something in here that will make this beautiful!

i am exactly what iPod wants! i am that guy! i walk everywhere now, thinking everything over a little too much, pondering every last detail, of every little thing. it's DUMB! i hate you, iPod, for making me this guy!

i don't know why it's different than carrying a walkman around; my theory is that the lightweightness of it makes you think you have a soundtrack going in your head. maybe.
or maybe i've finally lost it.
it has changed me.
thoughtfulness is for sucks.

we get it, iPod.