When taking a trip down memory lane, please remember your passport.
The weather here in partly sunny New York was deceivingly higher then the 40 degrees my Yahoo! weather forecast displayed when checking it on the cell phone this morning. This gave me quite a snigger, [note: English phrases here to denote sophistication] because while it displayed an actual temperature of 40 degrees F, it called for a high of 39. Anyway, I noticed a general lack of clouds (which would be partly cloudy to the untrained 51% clouds = partly sunny, 51% sun = partly cloudy) and decided if spring wanted to come to Long Island for the day that blast it, I'd treat the day as if it were so.
Fast forward the three hours it took my ass to get out of bed and stop watching Family Guy on DVD in my apartment and I was over at my Aunt's house starting up Yami (my new name for my motorcycle because I decided in a drunken stupor that everything I own needs a name). I haven't had a chance to spend much time with Yami other then maybe 20 minutes or so on Boxing Day (Canada) [which happens to be Dec 26th, look at your calendar) and decided she needed a little bit of a work out.
I've been running the engine for 15 to 20 min a week or so, dutifully, in order to keep her in working order and as such she needed a trip to the gas station for a fill. After that it was a trip with nowhere to go. In my experience those generally tend to be the best. I headed down towards Sunrise highway from 111, and I noticed heavy clouds creeping in from the south and decided I'd better stay close to the house, in case it starts to rain, and took a trip up Commack rd. That's when it hit me; American Bvd.
To those of you not familiar with "The Wood," American Blvd is a street known for it's two moderately steep hills (well for the south shore anyway), ability to go fast and turn at the end by 2nd Ave. All of which I came too, admittedly a little to fast, and a little too fun. From there I cruised around Brentwood down Suffolk ave and over by the golf course I used to hang out by (and sometimes in, shhhhhh) and the schools where we used to play baseball and Madison Ave where I used to live and shit and kinda feeling nostalgic. I was awash in it.
All the stuff we used to do as kids, and so much of it I still can't talk about because I'm not sure if the statuette of limitations is up. hahaha. anywhose, you're probably wondering when this story will have a point; oh it's coming, keep your pants on. (really, fornicating with a wall [wondering if Rey reads this and that's just for you pal])
Well, for a moral you have to fast forward to dinner tonight, and a slight backtrack in my mind again. I was sitting around the house wondering what to eat for dinner, as was my friend (and "landlord in a literal only sense") ad we decided we'd have Burger King, and I haven't been there in years. As a kid I loved BK. Alot more the Mc Donald's. For many reasons, probably the biggest being that it was the far burger joint and as such only got it on special occasions that somehow kinda made BK seem "high class". laugh all you want but that was the truth. Mc-y D's was only a handful of blocks away, and hell I could walk there, Burger kind was strictly at the Mall (which we only went to on rare occasions and mostly to play the Nintendo at the booth at the far end while my mom complained that's all we ever wanted to do) and on the other side of 111, which in my younger days might as well have been Liechtenstein for all I knew. I PASSED it maybe but once a year. Plus it had king in the name, surely it wasn't for the commoners. That made it the food of the gods.
You still with me? Yeah, I'm wrapping this up, we're just about at that point. Well, today, I went to BK, happily on my nostalgia trip, after touring the ol'e homestead a bit I'm thinking about biting into a whopper and I'd remember what a burger tastes like.
All notions of that were violently ripped from my mouth when I sat down and started "enjoying" my meal. Somehow it wasn't the same. The glory I'd always remembered was gone, and replaced with a shallow husk of greatness. The burgers were flimsy, soggy and uninspired, my onion rings might as well been card board from the way they tasted, Mozzarella sticks were tepid and not fully cooked. It was a letdown to say the least. Was this simply a bad experience or something more sinister?
Is it possible the King was not all I remembered it to be, and then I questioned my younger days, and to see if they were as good as I remembered them. Was it all in my head? I don't remember having a grand ol'e time as I lived them, but as I look back in retrospect I imagine the fun I was having. was it that I didn't recognize it as fun? Or do I imagine the complications of my life, as it exists now, and project a careless and fancy-free attitude about them because they're simply devoid of the complications I experience now? I remember being let down by thundercats when I saw them last. after a 15 year hiatus looking back on them now I only wonder what I saw in them in the first place.
It makes me wonder, what will my attitude be of today when it's tomorrow's yesterday? Am I sophisticated enough in my understanding of this life and climate it's lived in that I'll look back in retrospect the way I feel of them today, or will a few nights of sleep make them seem better with age? Or the worse, will I be comfortable in my days so much so later that today is recalled as a struggle and wonder how I made it through? no matter what, I guess only time will tell the answer that no one really asked. Until there was BK. and for that, BK, you're on notice, shape up Mr. Creepy-paper-machet-masked-man-who's-pocket-bike-racing-game-I-tottaly-want-to-play man, you're on notice.