Though this is going to be difficult, because I don't really have one favorite city. Oops? And we're not going to talk about how these are probably not cohesive "stories," but whatever. Anyone going to call me on it? I should also mention that these are fictional. Just sayin'.
Day 9: A story in 250 words or less about your favorite city.
Chicago
I’ve lived in this city for my entire life, I even went to school south
of this city, and when people said they were from my city, I was allowed to get
upset. Because they were from the
suburbs. But I never really got to know
Chicago for whatever reason. I suspect
it was fear. Of muggers, gangs,
tourists, everything. This fear
permeated my being even when you grabbed my hand and dragged me onto the El.
“Come on, it’ll be fun,” you said with the grin that always made me
melt like cheese in the microwave.
“I don’t know…” I waffled, like I do.
“Trust me?” you said, raising your eyebrows and peering over the tops
of your glasses.
“Never,” I joked. But it was
seeing the reflection of the skyline in your glasses that finally convinced me
that everything could be okay.
Paris
“I don’t want to go with just Grandma, it’ll be a total drag.”
“Alright, I’ll go with you.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
A six hour plane ride, and we landed in Paris, France, the place I had
been dreaming of since I realized French was a foreign language. The only problem being that I never imagined
I would have to cart around my grandmother who doesn’t speak a syllable of
French.
“Pare—lay vooz English?” she asked, prompting a groan from me and a
sigh from my mother. Then Grandma whips
out a handful of Euros and promptly informs us that she will be paying for
everything during our trip. And suddenly
I can see all of my frustrations just melting away…
"Yet once you've come to be part of this particular patch, you'll never love another. Like loving a woman with a broken nose, you may well find lovelier lovelies. But never a lovely so real."
- Nelson Algren, Chicago: City on the Make
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