Zombies and Cheese Steaks

I had never considered myself a suburbanite, but when I recently moved back in with my father who lives in Philadelphia I found out that I very much am one. The first thing I noticed when I moved here was the smell. Now I have lived in New Jersey so I know what it’s like to live where it smells, (that was a joke don’t send Tony Soprano) but I never realized that gasoline and dead pigeons can mix to form such a symphonic funk. When I walk, I’ve noticed that these smells aren’t necessarily everywhere you go, but where they are is both unavoidable and so pungent that it lingers in your nostrils just to the point where you hit the next smell as the first one leaves. The air quality is also noticeably different it’s more smoggy and you lose your breath sooner when you are walking briskly or have to exert yourself. There are pluses, I’m not all gloom and doom about the city. The cemetery that I basically call my back yard is both spacious and beautiful. The century old mausoleums have watched buildings rise and fall around them and have remained to tell the tale. I take long walks there when the sun begins to set and I lose myself in the memories of other people. Those times I would not trade. I do suppose I am screwed if the zombies decide to attack because I’m not ten feet from the first gravestone but there’s nothing I can do about that.

The city did attack me the other night and it was not with zombies. I went down to see my family for thanksgiving and spent the weekend. The whole time I was with them I was talking good about everything. Like how good the street corner Cheese Steaks were and how much to my chagrin the people were actually nice and polite. So anyway, the weekend goes very well and I even decide to stay an extra day and return Monday night instead. So on my way back my brother and sister are driving me back and they mentioned that they were getting hungry. So with my pride beginning to swell I mention the local tea place. We as a family like to check out every local tea place we find just to see if we can top our current favorite. My thoughts being that I wanted to extend the night as long as I could because once they leave its back to my quiet reality. So they agree and we go off to get some tea. We drive back and forth and can’t find the place. “Now I left it right here” I say to myself jokingly “I guess it’s in my other pants pocket”. Well, after that still wanting to extend the night I mention the great Cheese Steaks from earlier. After everyone decides on that we go to the local market. We park near the bus stop and I assure my sister that it’s ok to park there. We go in the store and order Cheese Steaks and when we get them I notice they charge more than I had mentioned and also charge for toppings. The whole time up to this point I was bragging about their cheap price and free toppings, but I was wrong. Then as we go to check out a homeless lady comes up and asks us to buy her broken CD player. Now this isn’t a problem but we honestly had no spare money; we even looked for change in order to pay for the food. Plus she has already gotten several dollars from me in the past. What the problem was that she didn’t care and she began to yell at us because we didn’t have anything to give her. We gave her what few pennies we got for change and went out to the car. Now that whole thing took about five or six minutes, but that was more than enough time for the passing Police Officer to put another mark in to fill his quota. Where I had thought we were in front of the bus zone we were right on the edge. At this point I was cursing the irony of the name ”Brotherly Love” and just wanted to go home and stew in my embarrassment. They both thankfully stayed calm and I’m still not sure if they were mad at me or not, but they took me home. I told this to my father the next day and he tells me with no real affliction in his voice “Welcome to the city”. Now having several days of hindsight I realize that all of these things are to me at least just one big hazing period. A welcoming if you will for this suburbanite to the fraternity that is the city of Philadelphia. I think I have a lot to learn.