Thursday, May 08, 2008

Mystery River

After the water ice I made a quick drive-through of my high school campus. I haven't had the opportunity to go there for four, maybe five, years. Each time I go (with the exception of my fifth year reunion and one time in the summer) I find myself pretty much incapable of getting out of my car and walking around. I had, overall, a very good high school experience...so it's not that walking around would flood me with all these negative memories. I think it's that, like so many other places, I have so many exact memories of how it was that I'm not interested in challenging those memories with a current reality...plus teenagers freak me out...as does running into former teachers and having them not remember my name. So, after the five minute drive through, I drove back down to Philly...purposefully over shot Center City and exited onto Kelly Drive. I drove east along the river (I have no idea what the river is called...is it the Delaware? Is it the Philadelphia River? I don't know) and stopped at one area where one could sit and look. I sat and I looked and wrote a little in my notebook.

This portion of the mystery river is used for crew practice. I found myself having one of those movie wish moments/that I was a different sort of person pangs....ie. I wished that I was the kind of girl a guy on a crew team would notice while practicing and be so taken with he'd stop chanting and mess up the rhythm. Yeah. Whatever. My friend L. when I told this to her later that day gave me a few reasons why this was a rather silly thing to think, chiefly among them the fact that those guys couldn't even see me really from where they were in the water and, also, I couldn't see them well enough to know if they were worth wishing for in the first place.

3 comments:

J said...

That's the Schuylkill river, pronounced School-kul.

It's where all the rowing gets done and where Boat House row is, which is very pretty at night.

I'm a big fan of Kelly Drive, which is named after Grace Kelly's brother.

cc said...

See, that's funny. I totally know how to pronounce the name...just had no idea where it was.

I liked the Drive too. Some times my friend J. refers to it as East River Drive...even though that's wrong.

J said...

I think East River Drive may be the part on the other side of the river, though that's now MLK Jr. Drive. No one calls it that though.

It's like how everyone still says Deleware avenue, even though they changed it to Coumbus like ten years ago. Damned if you'll find anyone who says that.