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I was born and raised on Long island. I don't exactly know what to say about it, but I feel like I would cheat you if I did not try and say something. Because, though I suppose this could be said for any town or region, I don't exactly want to admit I've left it, but there is nothing more satisfying than knowing that I have. Maybe it's true that's just a byproduct of being raised somewhere through awkward teenage years (which never seem to end,) but there's something about Long Island that seems to have something different to it. It's hard to describe the absolute disdain I have for so many people who call Long Island their home, and the complete love I have for so many people who call Long Island their home. Long Island... I suppose I remember childhood mostly through summers, as most people do. Haha. I have good memories about it, groups of kids playing in lawn sprinklers waiting for the ice cream truck to pull around. Soccer practice followed by pizza. The cool night breeze coming through my window by my bed even in August. I don't even know if I ever experienced one of those things, but God, it certainly feels like it. Grass seemed so green, everything seemed so bright. I can remember sitting in a lawn chair next to a smoking barbecue, reading Archie comics and eating a candy bar from 7-11, waiting for hot dogs and hamburgers. I know that happened to me because I can smell it, I can feel the paper cover of the comic book in my hands, and I can taste the Watchamacallit melting in my mouth. But childhood ended, and those awkward three years of Middle School began. Where you pretend to be in high school, only to find out how stupid you were and naive you were to what high school really was. (Only to find out later in life that in high school you were pretending to be an adult, only to find out how stupid you were and naive you were to what being an adult really is.) I remember vividly the mall, only because it was one of the few places you could go and be alone from your parents. I feel like it was necessary to be stupid and awkward all three years. But never-the-less, I still feel an affinity to those years, almost like given the chance I would live them again, without changing a thing. But nothing can compare to my high school years. Seeing as I am only now a freshman in college, and have only experienced these three sets of years, it makes sense that these three stand out. Being an adult of any age has a radically different set of memories and feelings as well, but I have to admit I don't know what they feel like. So, I have to write about high school years. Four years, and I loved two of them. Well, no two. Maybe two and a half. Two. Really just two. It would be impossible for me to even tell you one thing in its entirety that I truly remember about anything up to two months ago, because there is not enough time in my life to even come close to addressing how much everything meant to me. And a significant amount of what I mean to give to you should have been said right in that statement. This isn't going to go on much longer, if that is important to hear. It's hard to believe that something as insignificant as one block of road can fill me with so much emotion strong enough to allow tears to build up, but it does. So much makes me fill so far beyond human levels of emotion, so many insignificant things. In fact, more so them than anything important. High School graduation I could recite in four lines; the feel of pavement in the Starbucks' parking lot I hung out daily after it rained, however, I could never stop explaining. This isn't particularly interesting to read, I suppose, but I think that's what's most important. This whole thing is sort of a grand affair, an attempt to write significant feelings down, but all you need to do to understand my point is to go to Long Island, to find a few good friends, to get in a car, and to drive around Setauket, or Kings Park, or Smithtown, or St. James, or Port Jefferson, or Hauppauge, or Huntington, or...
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