Strapped into a toddler's car seat, I sit in the back of of Leonard and Doreen's car as we drive through New York City. It's night, and some bridge, it could be any of them, is lit up against the overcast, light-polluted ceiling called the New York City skyline. I must be three. Young enough to not have a proper understanding of bridges: the lights that run along the top of the bridge aren't where will drive, but I lack this understanding and I'm expecting to climb up the steep rails and coast down.

I babble to the driver and passenger that I'm excited for the bridge. As we go over it I realize that we aren't going up, and then the tears come and I am a bratty kid who didn't get his way.

Doreen tries to stop me, saying that we were going up, and then down.

She didn't know what my first impressions of the bridge were, but she was right. We went up and we went down, it just wasn't the way I thought it would be.

<<<<<<< | >>>>>>>