CHICAGO, IL. This is a story I've been writing my entire life. As a person who was born and raised in Chicago, it's in my blood. It's in the cells that make up my body. A makeup that slowly built up over time as I ate each meal and grew from a tiny child into a not-much-taller adult.
My mother and I didn't agree on a lot, but one thing I thought was particularly strange was that even though she was generally (in my view, at least) overprotective, one thing she had absolutely no trouble letting me do from a young age was take the Brown or Red Line downtown and walk around.
And truthfully, as a kid who grew up either taking the CTA (Chicago's public transit system) or walking everywhere, I grew the kind of situational awareness that city kids often do. I could tell when or if things felt sketchy, as well as if I was safe. I wore headphones everywhere I went, and I bounced around listening to my music. Most of all, I very rarely felt unsafe, no matter where I went. The one time I can recall feeling unsafe was, in fact, riding my scooter out on the far northwest side of the city late one night after coming home from my evening culinary school classes.
