Metro North Commute: Classic Rock, Boxrooster, and Suburban Dad Reflections
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Disclaimer: I am a dad living in Westchester, New York. The names of all people, but not all places, have been changed to protect the innocent and me from the glares of my neighbors who are definitely not reading this blog.
On the Metro North, when I'm not watching lawyers and bankers trying to forget their day by staring out the window at the changing scenery, when I'm not tooling around with drafts of poorly considered blog posts, I throw on my headphones and listen to music. Today, I'm listening to a band that came on an advertisement on my wife's instagram (I don't have Instagram, but sometimes she gives me her phone to look at pictures of sisters or friends from college). As far as music goes, my tastes are what I would call eclectic, and what my oldest would call "trash." Aerosmith. Bruce. Green Day. The Cranberries. No Doubt. Music people would call classic now. Music my oldest would call "tired". Anyway, I found this song called "Stuck in the Suburbs" by a band called Boxrooster that I've been kind of bumping. Feels like it could be on the soundtrack to the movie that will inevitably be adapted from this blog. Maybe the first song. Maybe that's a little too on the nose.
I think the lawyer who is sitting in front of me, writing emails on his Ipad, missed his stop in Rye. He's on the phone with his wife or someone his wife would be upset he's seeing. He's trapped on the train until the next stop. I play the song again.
My teenage daughter says a lot of things that I don't understand. Many of them I miss because she is talking so quickly, and I as an "old" am unable to keep up with the pace and the rhythm at which she fires off thoughts and ideas. Amongst other things, she has thoughts on Keeper of the Lost City, Olivia Rodrigo, Harry Potter, and Sephora. When I do hear her, sometimes I'm confounded. That's okay though. She gets good grades. She is generally kind to me, and when she isn't I ignore it and chalk it up to her being a teenager who can't drive and her being a person who had to grow under the guise of TikTok overlords and their unforgiving algorithm. My point is that I don't usually let this phase me, but it sometimes leads to arguments with her mother. Last week, my family and I were walking the Rye Playland boardwalk. My daughter saw a kid flapping his wings and making dinosaur noises. "Brah. That's so skibidi," she said loud enough so th...
Disclaimer: I am a dad living in Westchester, New York. The names of all people, but not all places, have been changed to protect the innocent and me from the glares of my neighbors who are definitely not reading this blog. I wondered how long they'd been dead before they decide to sell her scarves. The estate sale, the far more depressing sibling to the garage sale or tag sale is my nightmares come to life. People walking through artifacts of the past. Things you never expected to be shown to the public are there. Things like an unused copy of Muzzy (Je suis la jeune fille. Je suis maligne) or the extensive stencil collection that was hidden in the attic. Or, for me, the scarves that smell like moth balls, all of them hanging in the center of the room off a rack near the winter coats. This particular estate sale is packed. People have traveled from far and wide to see if they can find a record player (yes), a clock radio (yes), or plates with the face of the woman who died in her...
Disclaimer: I am a dad living in Westchester, New York. The names of all people, but not all places, have been changed to protect the innocent and me from the glares of my neighbors who are definitely not reading this blog. When I think about childhood, I think about waking up on Saturdays in the fall, still in my boxers. Brown, yellow, and orange leaf piles plastered to the end of the driveway. They're probably piling up at Highlands Middle School. The radiator is working, sort of, it's making a sound but the heat isn't emitting out the way it should. I lift the sheets, then the comforter off, and I glide across the wooden floors. Pictures of ancestors and relatives I don't know are hanging. Down the stairs, through the kitchen, and then back up the other set of stairs to the room my parents called the yoga room. The name was aspirational. No yoga was done, though there was a yoga mat in the room that collected dust. My brothers and I called it the television room. Th...
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