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Golden Gate
Feb. 7th, 2005 08:39 pmEvery spring, at around this time of year, my grammar school sponsored a trip for the eighth (or was it seventh?) grade students--we went to Quebec City, to stay with French families. It was supposed to be a language immersion thing, but of course the kids we were staying with were just as happy to speak English, so it wasn't really. At one point someone asked our French teacher why the exchange was never returned--why the kids from Quebec never came to stay with us. She (utterly unaware of tact) explained that their parents would never permit it--as far as they were concerned, San Francisco was a modern-day Babylon, a sinkhole of vice and sin, and they didn't want their children coming into contact with it.
OK, so she didn't really say "sinkhole of vice and sin." But it was something like that.
It was the first time I realized that I was growing up not just in a place, but also in an Idea, and that there were people who were afraid of that Idea. (Since then, many people have told me that they were afraid of some place I've lived, usually Chicago. I smile and try not to think badly of them.) It seemed strange at the time, and it still seems strange. I mean, we were just living our lives. There may have been terrible and dramatic events swirling all around us--and indeed there were--but when you're growing up these things don't seem extraordinary.
In retrospect, it was like living just at the edge of an Armistead Maupin novel, and I feel extraordinarily lucky to have grown up in that world, to have been exposed to that Idea (whatever it was) before I could possibly know that it was something people were afraid of.
OK, so she didn't really say "sinkhole of vice and sin." But it was something like that.
It was the first time I realized that I was growing up not just in a place, but also in an Idea, and that there were people who were afraid of that Idea. (Since then, many people have told me that they were afraid of some place I've lived, usually Chicago. I smile and try not to think badly of them.) It seemed strange at the time, and it still seems strange. I mean, we were just living our lives. There may have been terrible and dramatic events swirling all around us--and indeed there were--but when you're growing up these things don't seem extraordinary.
In retrospect, it was like living just at the edge of an Armistead Maupin novel, and I feel extraordinarily lucky to have grown up in that world, to have been exposed to that Idea (whatever it was) before I could possibly know that it was something people were afraid of.
