Irony

When I was 12 my parents bought their first house. It was on a really nice suburban street in down-town Hershey. It was one of those really quiet and safe neighborhoods, the kind with street lights and lots of trees.

I made a new friend after moving onto this street. Now I had always lived in Hershey, but before it was a little bit more of a shady neighborhood, not so nice and a really busy street. Anyway, back to the friend, we will call her M. M was great, she was different than all my other friends. Very musical and happy all the time.

By senior year of high school, M and I were still really good friends. But being from very different families, she went away to college, and I went to work at a shoe store in the Hershey Outlet Mall.

M ended up going to Ithaca College for music. Every time she would come home from school we would get together to hang out and catch up. She made Ithaca sound like such a wonderful, magic place.

Maybe it was just that I was still living in Hershey, selling shoes part time, making 5.00 an hour, but wow...did I ever want to go to Ithaca. It just seemed like an entirely different world...so far away from Hershey.

11 years later, I am still here...still only 8 miles outside of Hershey...but in less than a month, I am moving to that mythical city of Ithaca, the city that gave me hope when I was a 'townie'...hanging out at local bars, trying to relive old times with my high school friends who had moved onto their new lives.

It seems so strange now thinking back on all of it...how I completely idealized a town and made it my dream.

Okay so maybe it is a little bit weirder that I ended up meeting a guy from Ithaca...not to sound really crazy, but kind of almost like it was 'meant to be' or something incredibly cheesy like that. But come on, you have to admit it is a little strange...just maybe a little!