Uploaded September 2023 | Updated September 2026, 2 days ago
I remember taking my over one hour bus ride to high school. They called it busing. Busing was the codeword for the integration of urban schools. As I rode on that long bus ride, I used to sit and daydream about my life far and long away from that entire experience, knowing that I would soon see the angry people in the park with their rifles cocked and loaded waiting for us to arrive. I wondered about who I would be as I began to dream and take my far away trip to the Eiffel Tower in France where I could speak that french language I learned since middle school to people who could understand me and where I could walk through the Louvre museum in Paris. A museum filled with art. Art I read about it in books and loved to look at. It was in front of me. I could reach out and touch it. I was in love with Dutch post-impressionist art. I would often go to The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and walk through rooms filled with artwork. I had such a love for art, mostly paintings and sculptures. An Urban girl's secret fetish. I wanted to be an artist and someday have a home full of art work. Time to wake up, the bus ride is over and there are the police on one side of the street and the armed neighbors on the other side. This wasn't the south. No, this was Bayside, suburbia in Queens, New York.
I remember taking my over one hour bus ride to high school. They called it busing. Busing was the codeword for the integration of urban schools. As I rode on that long bus ride, I used to sit and daydream about my life far and long away from that entire experience, knowing that I would soon see the angry people in the park with their rifles cocked and loaded waiting for us to arrive. I wondered about who I would be as I began to dream and take my far away trip to the Eiffel Tower in France where I could speak that french language I learned since middle school to people who could understand me and where I could walk through the Louvre museum in Paris. A museum filled with art. Art I read about it in books and loved to look at. It was in front of me. I could reach out and touch it. I was in love with Dutch post-impressionist art. I would often go to The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and walk through rooms filled with artwork. I had such a love for art, mostly paintings and sculptures. An Urban girl's secret fetish. I wanted to be an artist and someday have a home full of art work. Time to wake up, the bus ride is over and there are the police on one side of the street and the armed neighbors on the other side. This wasn't the south. No, this was Bayside, suburbia in Queens, New York.
