Ode To Sam Mendes: It's Not That Bad

Or maybe I'm just not the type that "retires to the men's room to jerk off". [Sorry, Lester. I'm just not flawed. Or maybe I'm just too vain to admit it. You like it, you liked when Mena pulled it off.]

3 Reasons Why I Prefer Suburbia More Than Big Cities

Fortunately for me, I’ve been raised exactly half my life in a suburban neighborhood and in a few big cities. I enjoyed many more vacations and suffered through many more relocations and most of my friends, you can probably all conclude that, stability has never been a factor in my life. Based on these experiences in the world’s greatest and worst cities and towns I’ve gathered all the different lifestyles I possibly could and I, without a doubt, believe that the suburb is a better place to live.

1. Safety. If you don’t this little info about suburbia don’t be surprised. This concept all started, based on some sources, when groups of people decided to move away from social chaos a couple of hundred of years ago. I don’t believe entirely that this is the truth but definitely this was a move to change the way of living for future generations. You can definitely tell by comparing the statistics of crimes in suburban neighborhoods and big cities. In my town, I remember that the only crime ever was a man walking to close to a woman therefore making him a stalker. Then as I turn on the TV, all I here is that “there has been another shooting in Oakland”.

As my family was relocating [again], my mom’s routine was to send a couple boxes each morning to the post office before heading to work. The boxes were huge and one day she left forgetting to close and lock our front door. I was already at school and seven hours later when I walked home, I had the tough decision whether or not to go in. I did, eventually, and nothing was one millimeter misplaced. When I told my friends what had happened, they all laughed and said, “This is the suburbs, we don’t need to steal anything”.

2. Better Education. I always took summer school, not because I couldn’t keep up, more like learning it first to prevent “not keeping up”. The school system was quite brutal, challenging the “dumb Americans” standards, almost the same as the schooling in Asia. After you are born there, you had 4 years of freedom and frolicking in the Californian sun, but right when August started you were pushed into the education wave. Your goal from being merely 4 years old is to “get to Stanford and make us proud”. All our friends are competitors and all the fun we ever had on weekdays was comparing homework answers [of course we hit the malls on weekends]. During summer it wasn’t that our families couldn’t afford a vacation, heck, our families would double the vacation account and pay for numerous summer school classes. We didn’t go out and buy crayons and mechanical pencils; I had my first SAT book at 9.

You’d probably think that that’s pretty bad but believe me, I’d rather be learning and competing then being stuck in where I am right now. Now in the city, I sit in my classes everyday wondering what these kids learn. I wonder if their parents even care about the lack of education their children are receiving. I would say I’m about 2 years ahead [not to brag or anything] and I’m staying, hey I’m not dumb, I don’t need to skip a grade, might as well take it easy for now. But come on, I remember that my competition is in California. We’re still learning Pythagoras while they were learning advanced geometry and proving theorems.

I’d have to say we were a lot like robots though. We were all programmed to be successful and those who weren’t needed to be debugged. In the city, you’re parents didn’t love you if they didn’t buy you a Louis Vuitton. In the suburbs, you’re parents didn’t love you if they didn’t buy that multi-million dollar house so they could send their kids to the best school in the district. It tends to get annoying when you realize these kids really have no life at all with all this education they’re diving themselves into but really, education means success.

3. More Good Characters. I hate walking to downtown and seeing a bunch of homeless people on the streets. I hate how arrogant the people are there. I hate the honking and the swearing and the shoving. I don’t hate homeless people; I hate myself for not being able to help them. I hate myself for not being able to teach arrogant people to learn to be nice. I hate myself for not being able to fine people for the honking, the unnecessary swearing, and the rude shoving. Back in suburbia, I don’t have to deal with all this. I don’t have to worry about spending my lunch money on lunch or the guy sitting there without a meal for days. I can do my work in peace [though suburbans don’t signal when they drive which may cause a few honks here and there]. My friends’ parents all went to university, all have incredibly high paying jobs, and all respect where they live. I don’t have to sit in my math class and listen to the guy next to me sell cocaine [at the cheapest price on the market right now!]. I don’t have to know that somebody in our grade is a prostitute. And most of all, I don’t have to tell the people I love that my school has a daycare center for some of our students who decide [or didn’t] to have kids.

Don’t get my wrong, suburbans aren’t all perfect. There are numerous shows and movies that mock the way we live and the way we act. American Beauty, ironically one of my favorite movies of all time, portrays suburbans as “nothing more than ordinary”. Desperate Housewives proves that all of us who live in suburbia have “dirty laundry”. Sure we’re not perfect and we have lots of dirty laundry, but hey, we’d clean it up faster than you city folks.