The Kid in the city

My son has spent most of his life in the suburbs, the only exception being when he was nine and the two of us lived with friends in a row house in Oregon Hill, one of the older neighborhoods in Richmond, and not necessarily one of the safest (though it's been getting better). That year was his only experience living in the city - a year during which we were dirt poor and I was in the midst of my own depressive episode - and it is the only experience on which he has to base his opinions of city life. So for the past several years, whenever we discussed his inevitable move back to Richmond, and even last year, when the two of us lived in a house in the Virginia countryside, I heard nothing but complaints about how horrible it was going to be living in the city.

In response, I've taken it upon myself to teach him the joys of the urban lifestyle. He has, for instance, completely warmed up to the convenience of being able to call for food to be delivered to our door. Not just pizza or sweet and sour chicken, no, he can order burgers and spaghetti and black and bleu salads. Okay, not so much the salad, but he's excited about the options, nonetheless. He's even developed a platonic crush on the dirty, tattooed, Fu-Manchu sporting Birkenstock boy who delivers his favorite burgers. And he's starting to warm up to his new status as a city boy.

So yesterday I thought it was a good time for his initiation to another urban lifestyle institution - the laundromat. Now I know what you're thinking. Laundromats are everywhere, you say. What's so urban about a hot, stuffy, strip-mall occupying washeteria?

Well, I offer you this, in the kid's own words:

"I love the laundromat [ed. note: WTF?!]. You've got homeless guys sleeping on the plastic chairs inside. Snooty white people and hippies going to the health food place next door. Strange men asking to bum cigarettes. A crazy woman talking to her towels while she folds them. And some dude breaking up with his girlfriend on the payphone." And I think he would have added a bit about the college girls in their laundry day shorts too, but he never talks to his mother about such things.

Anyway, I think he's starting to warm up to the place.

My bad form

When I woke this morning, forty-five minutes after my alarm should have and probably did go off, I had the briefest notion to just call in and tell The Man I wasn’t coming. I should have done it. I’ve been about an hour behind all day long. I missed a meeting. I realized I didn’t have access to not one, but two databases to which I’ll need immediate access. And I got a parking ticket because I forgot that I parked in the two hour parking zone – because of my tardiness – and not in the deck where I usually park. Don’t even get me started on the parking ticket.

But in those few moments of eye-fluttering, what-the-hell-time-is-it, rising to consciousness, when I considered not coming in at all, I convinced myself that work was a necessity. Why? For one, I have only been at the new job a couple of months and I don’t want get a reputation as a slacker. And second, if I don’t go to the daytime job, I can’t in good conscience go to the night time job either. It would just be bad form.

And I need the money.

I hate money.

Yet I need it so.

I am money’s bitch.

See, I’m between homes at the moment. I’m not homeless, just staying with friends until I find suitable habitation. And by suitable, I mean something I can afford located within a decent school district. The kid will be back in a few weeks and he will need to be in school. Apparently there’s a law.

You would think that finding such habitation in such a school district would not be that difficult. But no.

Virginians were the last to practice Massive Resistance. What is Massive Resistance, you ask? Basically, it was the good ol’ boy way of giving the finger to those liberal nut jobs in Washington who desegregated the school systems. The short version is that instead of integrating, local governments were allowed to shut down public schools and grant money so families could send their kids to all-white, private academies. The practice ended sometime in the mid 1960’s. Sort of. It still pretty much happens in Richmond. The only difference is, they’ve left the public schools open.

Here’s how: The city is spread over the county line between Chesterfield and Henrico Counties. Each of these counties have excellent schools, for the most part. The problem is, the “city” of Richmond (ie the poorest part) is not a part of either county. Richmond city has its own public school system. Richmond city’s school system is not on par with the counties. It gets better at the high school level, but many of the schools aren’t fully accredited (not enough of the students meet the minimum Standards of Learning as set forth by the state of Virginia – thank you, GW and No Child Left Behind), are generally under-funded, and are in physical disrepair (an understatement). And because the Richmond City School System is so bad, most of the (white) people who can afford it send their kids to private schools.

So what happens is that in very lovely, racially and socially mixed neighborhoods, only the poorest kids go to the public schools. And generally, because of institutional failures, and yes, racism, there are few if any white kids in Richmond City schools.

And, yes, I am part of this racist behavior. And I hate it.

The first year my son was in Richmond, for fourth grade, I lived in Oregon Hill, a basically all-white neighborhood near campus and I sent the kid to the neighborhood elementary. I knew when I enrolled him that he was it – the one white kid in fourth grade. But I didn’t care. He didn’t either.

But with kids, anyone who sticks out, anyone different is the object of bullying. I made him stick it out for the rest of the year, but that summer I sent him back to his father. Partially because even the best schools in the county don’t compare to those back in Iowa, and partially because I was having my own difficulties and thought it was best for the kid to be with his dad at the time. It wasn’t. But lesson learned.

When I decided to bring him back to Virginia last year, we moved out to the middle of nowhere with a friend, in an excellent school district. But that didn’t work out either. So now I am between domiciles, looking for a place I can afford, that isn’t in a school district where only half the kids are passing the state’s Standards of Learning.

This is why I had to jump out of bed and endure the day instead of rolling over and going back to sleep.