Re: American Idiot
Posted: 22 Feb 2019, 11:12
I grew up in Sunset Park, located in South Brooklyn, New York, just below Greenwood and north of Bay Ridge.
Our family home was the second from the corner off 6th Ave and 54th Street with a red front door, the numbers 5404 stamped above it in gold. The three-storey townhouse was built in 1910 and had been renovated by my father just after the Y2K scare. I remember counting the twelve steps it took to climb the L shaped staircase to the front door every day after school. There was a deli, small grocery store, and laundromat right across our busy street, but inside the house was quiet, most of the time.
It was less than a ten minute walk to the closest station on 53rd Street and, from there, about forty minutes to Coney Island where they sold the best hot-dogs in Brooklyn. My friends and I spent countless weekends at Astroland eating junk food and riding the Cyclone. I took my first ever girlfriend on a date there. They took down our favourite ride and replaced it with the Thunderbolt, a crazy looking roller-coaster I don’t think I have the stomach for anymore. The place was renamed Luna Park not long after I left home to attend the NYPD Police Academy.
My friend and I rented a tiny one bedroom apartment with two other cadets. I didn’t mind the bunk beds, poky-little-kitchen, and dirty bathroom. It was a small price to pay for freedom. I worked nights at an old Italian restaurant to get by. The tips were terrible, but the leftovers were worth their weight in gold. I put the running track to good use that year.
I don’t know what possessed me to move to Canada. Perhaps I wanted to get as far away from home as possible. Small cities like Harper Rock are always crying out for more law enforcement officers. Six weeks in a local Police College had me up to scratch and, before I knew it, I was here . . . upside down, bleeding, kicking out the windscreen of our cop-car, yelling at Steven to open his eyes.
“Knowles! Knowles, wake up! Knowles!”
Aaron slammed his boot into the windshield again and gave a groan of pain-laced-relief as it came loose. He undid his belt, quickly met by the roof of the car, now floor, with a sharp cry of pain. He hissed and clutched at his ribs and right arm. “Knowles!”
The ringing in his ears was replaced by the blast of the truck horn as his senses were sharpened by an onslaught of fresh agony. Aaron unbuckled Steven and dragged him from the car. He left the man on his back, careful not to jolt his neck or head, remembering his training from a recent, mandatory first-aid course.
On his feet, Aaron could see that the truck driver was slumped over the wheel and, on closer inspection, found that he had not been wearing a seat-belt. He pulled himself up onto the step of the cab after throwing the door open and checked the man’s pulse before radioing the station.
The ambulance only took six minutes, it seemed someone had beaten him to the call, perhaps one of the bystanders that were gathered along the street edge. “Concussion, multiple fractures, internal bleeding,” he heard one of the ambulance officers call in ahead to the hospital as they carted off the tracker driver and Steven, both wearing neck braces.
“I’m fine,” he waved the female paramedic aside who had tried to tend to his arm.
“You’re not fine, you’re bleeding and your arm is clearly broken!”
Broken, he thought, as the adrenaline-dulled-pain flared up again all of the sudden. “I have to give a statement.”
“You can do that after you’ve been given the all clear.”
Our family home was the second from the corner off 6th Ave and 54th Street with a red front door, the numbers 5404 stamped above it in gold. The three-storey townhouse was built in 1910 and had been renovated by my father just after the Y2K scare. I remember counting the twelve steps it took to climb the L shaped staircase to the front door every day after school. There was a deli, small grocery store, and laundromat right across our busy street, but inside the house was quiet, most of the time.
It was less than a ten minute walk to the closest station on 53rd Street and, from there, about forty minutes to Coney Island where they sold the best hot-dogs in Brooklyn. My friends and I spent countless weekends at Astroland eating junk food and riding the Cyclone. I took my first ever girlfriend on a date there. They took down our favourite ride and replaced it with the Thunderbolt, a crazy looking roller-coaster I don’t think I have the stomach for anymore. The place was renamed Luna Park not long after I left home to attend the NYPD Police Academy.
My friend and I rented a tiny one bedroom apartment with two other cadets. I didn’t mind the bunk beds, poky-little-kitchen, and dirty bathroom. It was a small price to pay for freedom. I worked nights at an old Italian restaurant to get by. The tips were terrible, but the leftovers were worth their weight in gold. I put the running track to good use that year.
I don’t know what possessed me to move to Canada. Perhaps I wanted to get as far away from home as possible. Small cities like Harper Rock are always crying out for more law enforcement officers. Six weeks in a local Police College had me up to scratch and, before I knew it, I was here . . . upside down, bleeding, kicking out the windscreen of our cop-car, yelling at Steven to open his eyes.
“Knowles! Knowles, wake up! Knowles!”
Aaron slammed his boot into the windshield again and gave a groan of pain-laced-relief as it came loose. He undid his belt, quickly met by the roof of the car, now floor, with a sharp cry of pain. He hissed and clutched at his ribs and right arm. “Knowles!”
The ringing in his ears was replaced by the blast of the truck horn as his senses were sharpened by an onslaught of fresh agony. Aaron unbuckled Steven and dragged him from the car. He left the man on his back, careful not to jolt his neck or head, remembering his training from a recent, mandatory first-aid course.
On his feet, Aaron could see that the truck driver was slumped over the wheel and, on closer inspection, found that he had not been wearing a seat-belt. He pulled himself up onto the step of the cab after throwing the door open and checked the man’s pulse before radioing the station.
The ambulance only took six minutes, it seemed someone had beaten him to the call, perhaps one of the bystanders that were gathered along the street edge. “Concussion, multiple fractures, internal bleeding,” he heard one of the ambulance officers call in ahead to the hospital as they carted off the tracker driver and Steven, both wearing neck braces.
“I’m fine,” he waved the female paramedic aside who had tried to tend to his arm.
“You’re not fine, you’re bleeding and your arm is clearly broken!”
Broken, he thought, as the adrenaline-dulled-pain flared up again all of the sudden. “I have to give a statement.”
“You can do that after you’ve been given the all clear.”