Feeling safe
Tom wonders why the cops are stopping him as he walks home. Tom, they’re the man. They’re keeping you down.
Having said that, when I first moved to Chicago my friends from a smaller town would ask how it was living in the big city. “Well,” I’d say, “there was a knife fight on the street corner last night but the cops came right away. There are neighborhoods in the city that don’t have knife fights, but there are also neighborhoods where there are knife fights and the cops don’t come. So it’s OK.”
(There was the time our roadtrip car broke down in Shamrock, Texas (Pop. 2,029) and we were walking from the Ford dealership to the grocery store to get a snack and a cop pulled over and actually started the conversation with, “you boys aren’t from around here…”)
That reminds me of when I decided to move to Chicago.
That year, for Christmas, my mom gave me pepper spray.
For my birthday, fourteen days later, she gave me mace.
I think she might have been trying to tell me something.
Hi!
I am from Spain but i am going to Chicago to study english all along september. I dont know the city and the people, so i would like to know someone from there just to keep contact and talk about the city and all that. My hotmail address is euridamos@hotmail.com in case you want to talk to me at msn. Thanks!