childhood, (it's not boring)!

I read an interview with someone about how she would listen to lawnmowers in this small town in Minnesota where she lived and long to get out of there, to the point where it was painful, it made "her heart ache." I had something similar, in Evanston, looking out at the lake, gorgeous though it was, past the cemetary and highway that led into Chicago......maybe it's all the bands I listened to who were British, but just looking at that vast body of water which stood between me and these other places like New York, LA, London, places that were in the news every day, it was painful. At the time, there just didn't seem to be much where we were. I couldn't live there. All I thought about was other places, and people who lived there. What was around me? Chicago is......nice, but it's big and flat and bland, or it seemed to be. But it could have been worse. My mother would take me up to Michigan all the time to visit her family. I mean, we would spend hours, days, with no company except each other and.....trees. And occasional billboards, hideous. The majority of people in these towns are overweight by the time they're 30, and my mother would constantly remark about "all the fat people." My family lived in Battle Creek which they called Battle Hick. As a kid I would repeat this, not knowing what it meant, and they told me never to say that in public....but I didn't understand why, but that it must be bad.