Little New Yorker

New York City is one unique central hub of population that is home to many “first generations.” Having been a New Yorker, from birth to present, serves as a foundation of what makes me who I am, the making of the first generation. A typical New Yorker, to me, is a person who needs to be on the move to function on a daily basis. Not everyone in the city has the time to slow down and give you a chance to walk past or exchange greetings. It’s all or nothing, you’re either busy or aren’t busy at all. It’s like survival of the fittest, you need to make your way to your goal or destination on your own in order to live up to your standards today.

There’s a difference between the city now and then. When I was growing up, from the time I was born to around the age of nine years, I lived in the mildly crowded neighborhood of Corona. Corona is like the dream of a child, there are so many places to go to in a short walking distance of your home. You could walk around the corner of your house and be bombarded with various types of toys, clothes, shoes, and food markets or stores. Everything was a mixture of one culture or the other. There was never a day I didn’t see something new, as if trying out a different smoothie blend a day. One venture I really remember is the toy stores that would have displays outside during the warmer weather, in which they would have a small tub of water with a toy animal swimming in it. This always fascinated me. Every kid would have to stop in front it just to watch, even if they weren’t buying it. That was window shopping in those days, you could just go watch it everyday.

One of the factors that have an extremely important factor of what defines the city to me is Education. I’ve always have had a passion for learning new and interesting things everyday. But the key role here is the school field trips that I partook in. I don’t recall ever missing a single field trip because I never wanted to be left out. Almost every month my class would go on a trip to a museum, aquarium, zoo, circus, play, or an orchestra, depending on the season. Unfortunately, back then we didn’t all own or allowed to have cameras, otherwise I would have captured many pictures as a part of my memories. I would find myself caught up in a view of an animal, detailed act or just plain sight of where we were located. I was absorbed in the tremendous amount of information that I could intake from those trips and would always have something to discuss about with my siblings or parents. My parents described me as a talkative child because I liked to note every extract detail of things and share them. I always found that school trips made a fun relaxed environment and allowed us students to interact with our different interests and backgrounds to learn.

New York City just has a lot to offer. Sometimes, I like to recall older days and wish that I could relive those moments one more time. I even contrast it to today’s world; yesterday was low and yellow screen T.V. and today is the big LCD screen. Just as if you were to view a film from 10 years ago and contrast its color to a film made today. Yesterday was more of a time where you were actually interacting with the environment in physical form and today almost everything is done digitally, it makes me miss the old days. However, I still find that I learn something new about our city almost everyday. There are still places I have never been to even though I lived here my entire life, which hasn’t been long so I wish to try to get the best of it.

Unfortunately, as a part of growing up in New York City, a lot of responsibilities come into hand, just as in any other city. These things that should really be noticed or visited drop to the bottom of our “to-do-list’s,” or simply go unnoticed. This is the reason why I chose a profession that allows me to interact with the rest of the world and the environment.