Post Apocalyptic Suburbia

Re-experiencing the places of my youth feels surreal on a crisp afternoon the first week in November. It is far too warm and exceptionally quiet. It feels like I'm in a movie set and not just a visit to my childhood home. The music from my headphones plays too loud for me to hear my footsteps as I cross streets without fear of collision, the way a rising soundtrack erases the cacophony of the characters on screen during the climax of the film. A sky so blue and a sun so bright seem abnormal and fake, and even eerier because I’m alone. I traverse the neighborhood with no company. Like the Truman Show. Like the Rapture Came. Like I was Left Behind.

In this fictional moment of present day, where I am a character alone in suburbia, I experience a montage of emotional images as I approach the pond by which I spent most of my outdoorsy growing up. From my solo standpoint, my possibly post-apocalyptic perspective, I see with different eyes.

I slow.

There used to be a tiny island in the middle of that pond, complete with its own tiny desert-island-style tree. When my pony tail was so long and knotted, when my sneakers were worn paper thin, when my tan lines were of short sleeves and knee length shorts, I used to sit at the edges of that pond and devise plots to reach the pond. It wasn't far from shore, but swimming and boating weren't allowed and rule-breaking wasn't my thing. Maybe I could come at night, maybe I could Huck-Finn myself a raft; maybe the water in this man-made suburban pond was not as deep as I feared. I just needed to get there.

I stare.

If the pond was man-made, than the island was, too, and now, with the intelligence of maturity, I wonder what that developer imagined as he diagrammed the burgeoning town’s future pond complete with a tiny island; inspiring the imaginations of young children already dreaming of their escape from the American flags and basketball hoops of Edward Scissorhands suburbia. All these years later, after the apocalypse, the setting has changed. The pond remains the same, but the island is gone now. At some point it began to tilt and dip, and eventually it disappeared into the dark water.

It was swallowed by the pond.

I escaped into the city.