Reconnecting With The People Who Knew Me When...

Recently I've been given the great gift of reconnecting with some friends I had known from my childhood, most of whom I've known for over 30 years (thanks Facebook!).  I was pleasantly surprised to see that just about everyone is alive and doing well and raising families of their own.  It was surreal to chat with a couple of them by phone and go down memory lane and reminisce about the good old days and remember funny and sad incidents as if they had just happened yesterday.  One of my favorite memories is when me and my closest friend sat in the hallway in the projects of Van Dyke and begin to break down crying because we felt that no one was properly taking care of Stevie Wonder (How could he see how his hair looked every day?  How did he know whether or not people were stealing from him, etc.).  Once we were reassured (by another girl who was convinced that we had completely lost our minds) that Stevie was probably okay, our attention then turned to whether or not the Son of Sam would come and kill us.  Honestly, you can't make this stuff up. 

We grew up in Brownsville, Brooklyn and we enjoyed our childhood to the fullest.  It was a time when everyone looked out for one another and it was before the age of Wii, XBox DVR's, Red Box, and everything else that causes us to isolate ourselves from the outside world today.  It forced us to be innovative and creative (I mean really, who didn't have a custom made skelly top?).  And where else could your have a day's worth of fun by simply turning on a fire hydrant during the daytime, and playing music from a large speaker at night?  You made friends and connected with people who you would know for a lifetime.  In "Death of Autotune," Jay-Z," (from the brilliant Blueprint 3 album) says "I don't be in the project hallway talking about how I be in the projects all day."  I so get that as I can vividly remember spending a whole day in the project hallway and loving every minute of it.  Brownsville, and Van Dyke in particular, never felt scary to me, it just felt like home, and I was surrounded by people who felt more like family members than friends.  The opportunity to reconnect with these folks brings life full circle for me, it feels like they were pieces to a missing puzzle that have now been solved.

A few of us are in the process of trying to arrange a reunion that we hope will be an annual event, I can't wait.  So, here is a special shoutout to my Brownsville family.  Here's hoping that we get to share another 30 years worth of memories.

So, that's TarazTake for today, what are your thoughts?