I’m still Joshy from the block

I like our new neighborhood. I like it because I can look back ten years and remember my first place in Austin. My roommate and I rented a
town house in the ghetto. I would wake up at 5 a.m. to the sounds of aluminum cans being thrown out of the dumpster just outside of my bedroom window. This homeless guy would climb into the dumpster every morning and throw cans out onto the pavement to be later picked up and put into his shopping cart.

We heard gunshots on a regular basis. Sometimes I couldn’t fall asleep until I heard a gunshot. I’m a creature of habit.

I remember waking up and having to push aside my roommate’s and his friends’ extracurricular paraphernalia so I could sit on the couch, watch TV and eat breakfast on the coffee table. This usually entailed pushing one of my roommate’s friends off of the couch.

I spent nearly 8 years in southeast Austin between Riverside and Oltorf. I was a few months shy of getting a tear drop tattooed by my eye and putting my name on the back of my car in Old English lettering. I’m straight up from the ‘hood, yo. Keepin’ it real, ya know? I did move into what my friends and I appropriated dubbed the Bristol Method. Building 4 was our fraternity. We shared and shared alike. Some of my closet friends are from the Method. We had a great time while we all lived there. It was still the ghetto though.

Now I’m in a ‘hood where the neighbor down the street owns a Scaraab. The guy that lives across the street drives a NSX. The neighborhood is kept up. People jog while talking on their cell phone headsets. Yes, I speak the truth. I witnessed this yesterday. A young lady was jogging while talking on her cell phone.

“[gasp] Hey Julie! It’s [gasp] Bianca. Guess what? I [gasp] went to Nordstrom’s [gasp] yesterday and bought two [gasp] sports bras [gasp]. After my jog I’m [gasp] taking the Excursion to pick up [gasp] Ophelia and Britney from fencing [gasp] class and we’re going to [gasp] the country club for Erica’s shower! [gasp] Ciao!