I have always lived in suburbs. My family thought that they would be a nice place to raise a family, and they were right. I have fond memories of my childhood: barbecues, Boy Scouts, pool parties, Little League Baseball. Most importantly, my family living in a place where there were other kids my age. Having these immediate comrades enabled the neighborhood to grow up together. Most of the houses were the first to be owned by their inhabitants. Within a few years, a nice little community had been developed. Soccer moms and dads would all pile into their minivans and go to the fields on Saturday mornings and top it all off with an evening of drinking with the neighbors. Things were good...on the surface. After a while the darker side of humanity crept into our sphere of utopia. Divorce, adultery, alcoholism, rage...I knew not of these things until the family across the street began to crumble. Pretty soon, those kids had two families; neither one of them complete. I began to realize that things aren't always nice and clean. I became aware that man is evil and insatiable. The real side of people came out when comfort levels were reached. Lust and envy manifested as a result of the inequality of the separate islands of my little housing tract.
I guess what I kept with me from the suburbs is an appreciation for the finer things and order. I have now developed an awareness of the valuable and retarding effects of living in cookie cutter houses. I didn't find myself in the suburbs but I know that they are a big part of who I am as an individual.
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i've been wondering, what actually happens when a community "grows up together"? the immediate effects are that your children have other children their age to play with, and all the moms can go to PTA and soccer games together and all the dads can coach little league or swim team practice or whatever. All very nice and idyllic, but what happens after that? What happens when all those kids grow up together, graduate high school together, and LEAVE the community EN MASSE to go to COLLEGE? Then all you have left of your heaven is a town with very little cultural enrichment for adults, who now that the kids are all gone (and let's face it, probably not coming back) and the parents are all in their late 40's, there's nothing to do! No museums, no theaters, no rich history or landmarks or ANYTHING except a town with only 40 or 50 years' worth of existence.
Your post reminded me of this question. =)
It seems like your awareness developed as you grew older and was something that would have happened regardless of where you were living, however the comfort that a safe life lulls you into definitely has the possibilty of making the awakening more shocking. I agree that in retrospect a suburban childhood creates mixed feelings. There is the appreciation for the closeness and the "bubble" but a wish that you had had more exposure and an uneasiness about your preparedness for a life in a different environment.
The idea that man is always evil is not necessarily true. The idea, I believe, is actually the other way around. Rather, I think that man is good, but the idea that life is so simple, patterned and "suburban" forces people to seek out more in life, whether bad or good, than the suburbs seem to provide. This is where all of the desire for "drama" comes about, why certain people care about someone else wearing the same thing as them.
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