The City I Once Knew Is Gone

I don’t know if crime has increased or not. But it makes me sad.

How Dangerous The World Is

This is a question that I ask myself every day.

I know the answer won’t change the reality of the situation, but I keep looking for it. I look for some reassurance that the world I once knew wasn’t crumbling to pieces.

The fear of crime and my catastrophizing mindset have been quite a hindrance to me in the past few years.

I’m constantly bombarded with news from traditional and social media alike. About yet another robbery or act of violence happening. All of this information, in addition to the pandemic, is what made me so averse to going outside.

Another mugging in the news. Just wonderful.

It almost feels wrong for me to feel this way. After all, I live in a country that is relatively safe. I know that my odds of being harmed are extremely low.

But I can’t help but fear that I’m going to be that 1 in 10,000 or whatever.

Back In My Day…

As a kid, I didn’t have enough life experience to say back in my day.

But I should be old enough now.

So, back in my days of my childhood, I felt much safer. Granted, I may have only felt so because I was unaware of the real world. But I never felt unsafe when I was out and about.

It really feels that the situation has gotten so much worse in the world in recent years. With the whole pandemic, fears of war, and rampant political corruption.

It’s hard to have a positive outlook anymore.

Even locally, it feels that criminals are running the place into the ground without repercussions. This was the city I grew up and lived in for 13 years of my life.

I thought it was the greatest.

Nowadays, I can’t feel that connection anymore. I feel nothing but frustration and fear as to what it appears to have become.

It’s become a laughingstock on the political front, based on what I’ve been reading online. All the stories in the news were further reducing my hope.

I don’t know what to believe.

There’s conflicting information and accounts everywhere. But regardless of the truth, it is painful to see my hometown reduced to mockery.

I can’t say for sure that when I was a kid, it was totally safe either. I definitely felt safer. Maybe the situation was always this bad.

I want to doubt that idea. But again, I don’t know what to believe.

My First Crime

This is the first real crime I encountered living in my hometown. It’s nothing as crazy as one would probably think.

But it was still technically a crime.

I would always go to the local playground with my family to do kid things. Creating a giant sand pile for the heck of it. Playing on the structures in the park. And shooting some hoops occasionally.

I remember one day, we noticed our basketball had gone missing. We had placed it underneath the bench. My parents had to go check on one of us kids.

But when we returned, it was gone.

So we went down the ramp out of the park to see if someone had taken it. And sure enough, there were two kids walking away with my basketball. Just dribbling away with it as if they didn’t even care.

We called out to them to tell them it belonged to us. And the guy bounced it back to us. At least he had the decency to return it.

*bonk*

However, maybe a few months later, it happened again. And this time, there was no one in sight. The ball was gone. It was a real bummer, considering it was rather expensive too.

This frustrated the hell out of me as a kid. I had been told to never take what didn’t belong to me. I had no idea what compelled others to steal, even something as insignificant as a basketball.

Maybe I was pretty sheltered. I never really saw bad intentions in anyone. So the motives behind stealing were something I could not comprehend.

My World Was Rocked

My childhood home was one of those buildings with two separate abodes. Some relatives lived in the downstairs one, while we lived in the upstairs one.

One night, I was really tired and ended up falling asleep on the couch. It was propped up against the wall. And there were a few windows with a view out to the street.

Back then, I could actually sleep. As opposed to today, where I close my eyes and lie there, remaining conscious throughout the whole night, and then wake up still tired no matter what.

Headaches and fatigue. Fun.

When I was a kid, I would close my eyes and enter this state of hibernation. Before I was even aware I had fallen asleep, it would be the next day. And I would be fully refreshed and ready to start the day.

So that night, I closed my eyes and lost consciousness pretty quickly.

And the next day arrived.

However, after I woke up, my parents told me that someone had thrown a large rock through the downstairs window. It happened early in the morning, around 5:00–6:00 AM.

There wasn’t any apparent motive. It seemed like it was vandalism for the sake of doing so. They had broken the window and sped off in a car.

And once again, I couldn’t comprehend these actions.

Why the hell would they do something like this?

Only in hindsight did I realize how dangerous this could have been. Those vandals could have chosen to smash the top window instead. You know, the window I was sleeping right under.

If they had done so, that rock could have ended up hitting me in the head. At the very least, I would have been cut up by the shower of broken glass.

I could have been hurt pretty badly.

It’s honestly pretty astonishing that the sound of breaking glass didn’t wake me up. It only happened a couple of feet below where I was lying.

I had to rethink sleeping outside on the couch from then on.

A Literal Bomb

2014. It was the last year of my childhood I would call this city my home.

I had done pretty well in elementary school and middle school. But after both graduations, the school district refused to let me into my schools of choice.

Instead, I would be forced to commute all the way across the city, instead of the school just a block away.

I was learning pretty quick that life wasn’t fair.

This wasn’t possible for me at the time. And it was in a dangerous area. Because of this, in addition to many other reasons, my family decided to move us away the next year.

It was October. Only a few months left until I would be saying goodbye to the only place I had known my entire life. I would be starting high school someplace else.

We were watching Game 7 of the 2014 World Series on television. This was before my internet addiction, and there was nothing else to do.

San Francisco Giants versus the Kansas City Royals.

It was the bottom of the 9th inning in a very close game.

The Giants had three points, while the Royals had two. The Royals had a runner on third base. If the next batter even got a single, they would extend the game to an extra inning.

But if they hit a home run, it would be over for the Giants.

I had no idea who was going to win. It could go either way. I was absorbed into the game as pitch by pitch went by. The tension was reaching a climax.

You could see all the people in the crowd were on edge.

Two balls and two strikes. One more strike to end the game.

Here came another pitch. The batter swung and sent the ball flying. I thought the game was over. But it was only a flyball.

And it was quickly falling back to Earth.

The crowd started cheering and the camera quickly switched to another view. Pablo Sandoval came running into foul territory, and the rest was history.

Downstairs, I could hear my relatives cheering and celebrating. They were Giants fans. All of the players and coaches on the television ran onto the field.

A couple of minutes passed as we watched the celebrations. But then…

*BOOM*

An explosion echoed throughout the night. It was one of the loudest things I’ve ever heard in my life.

It was strong enough to where I felt a slight thump in my chest. And it scared the living crap out of me.

I later learned that my neighbor’s car had been completely totaled. It had been parked right outside my house. The windows of the vehicle were blasted out, and remnants of glass remained on the sidewalk.

It was either from a cherry bomb or gunshot.
Hopefully, they had car insurance.

Maybe it was a Giants fan who took the celebrations too far. Or a Royals fan taking out their frustration in the worst way possible. I have no idea.

This wasn’t a typical instance of crime, as it was only spurred by the World Series happening.

But it was still a prime example of how little I understood.

I couldn’t comprehend how someone could act so destructive and dangerous over a sports game.

And the scary thing was, there could be more people like them.

More And More Bad News

Over these past years, I’ve been hearing stories about my old home. My grandparents and other relatives still live there, and we visit them often.

Apart from social media and news, I also hear about what’s been happening around the neighborhood from them.

None of it makes me optimistic.

A neighbor had their car’s catalytic converter stolen. Not once, but twice. There was a news article about a woman attacked by a homeless man. Right in my neighborhood, only a few blocks away.

If you have valuables like a camera out, the locals will now warn you to hide them. And no one wants to park their car outside anymore.

Even as I was driving my family home one night, I passed by a massive crowd of young people (i.e. my age) by the side of the street. There’s nothing wrong with that alone, but I would be lying if I said they didn’t scare the hell out of me.

Was I about to get mobbed?

A car popped out and made a right turn in front of me. And they gunned it.

They tore down the street. The speed limit was 35 MPH, but it looked like they were going over 100. It was impossible for them to slow down for anyone in time.

Had anyone been crossing the street, they for sure would have killed them. I actually saw and stopped for some pedestrians a few blocks down the road.

A really good thing those folks weren’t crossing a few minutes earlier.

My Hometown Is No More

So here we are today.

I’ve looked at the statistics and read countless stories. Some types of crimes are way up, and some aren’t. But some proclaim the data as inaccurate or misinterpreted.

All my family members say the city has changed since the 80s. I wouldn’t know. But even since we left a decade ago, it seemed to change a lot. I always feel on edge when driving around. It no longer feels safe.

I don’t know what the truth of the situation is. Maybe all of this is just a part of growing up. Or maybe it really is dangerous now. I don’t know whether crime has increased or if I’m just seeing more of it.

But one thing is certain.

The city I once knew is gone.

It saddens me. I don’t know why it’s like this. I don’t know who is to blame. Frankly, none of that matters to me.

I just wish I could have it back.