(no particular order)
1) I can’t seem to walk down the street at night without having to imagine myself brutalizing a machete wielding mugger.
2) My baby niece can’t play in a pile of leaves for fear that the wetness underneath isn’t simply that morning’s dew.
3) Unlike other young, white, middle class douche-bags, I can’t seem to take it as a point of pride that I live in Bushwick.
4) Waiting on the G platform for 45 minutes before being told the train isn’t running.
5) The dead rat wedged between my front stoop and the bulk-head.
6) Seven different Chinese restaurants in a five block radius and every one of them sucks.
7) The children outside my window who might either be playing stick ball or beating each other to death. The sounds are indistinguishable.
8) Cookie, the wild-eyed, loud mouthed stay-at-home mom, who claims not only to have lawsuits pending against our landlord, but also several families on the block and the New York Department of Corrections. Actually, I kind of like her.
9) The seemingly simple task of going to Trader Joes is, at minimum, a two hour ordeal.
10) The fact that you can be woken up in the middle of the night by a fully armed SWAT team who realize only AFTER they’ve tossed your room that they’ve got the wrong address.
