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Creative Writing: When I Was A Kid

Creative Writing: When I Was A Kid


When I was a kid we left the dirty streets of Brooklyn, New York for the
quieter suburban streets of Connecticut. We moved into a large house in Norwalk,
Connecticut. Norwalk is the sort of town that dreams of being a big city but
will always be just another small port on the Connecticut coastline. Like out
of some horror story, the south side of town offers plenty of frightening
images: ghettos, drug dealers, prostitutes, graffiti, and even young urban
professionals. The south end was a popular place to work, but when the day
ended, these young men and woman got into their BMWs, Porsches, and other toys
and drove to safe ground. Most found their way to surrounding towns: Westport,
Wilton, New Canaan, and others. Other people, like my parents, crossed town
through East Norwalk to our home in the northern end of town. Sometimes I would
hear my father boast to far off relatives that we lived in a nice residential
neighborhood (otherwise known as "the good area") In most horror stories, as
the hero approaches some haunted house (or some other terror) you can shout,
"Don't go in there! Stay away!" People moving into Norwalk have no such luck;
they move into the charming town without a clue of it's underlying sickness and
disagreeable citizens.

One of my first discoveries was the river that passed through the middle of town.
I was only a kid, maybe ten, when I started fishing by the edge of the river.
It wasn't easy finding the perfect location; this was a place where I would
want to be alone, a place to get away from the unhappiness that would spread
like fire through my home on occasion.

This time away was possibly the most important thing to me then. When I turned
eleven years old, one of my favorite gifts was a large book. When the moment
was right, I ran upstairs to my bedroom, opened the book, and found the word
"fish." The brown book, Funk and Wagnals (the name made me giggle), defined the
word: to catch or...