Heard about Houston

I was talking with my mom and her cousin (who is also my cousin too, I guess) about living in the places I've lived and about my upbringing in Houston. And though I'm a little afraid that I hurt my Mom's feelings a little when I talked about what a horrible place Houston was to spend my formative years (or more like deformative years), and I'm pretty sure I came across as an ungrateful offspring, the discussion track just went in a place that my frank regrets about having to grow up in the Bayou City just came right out.

One plus about this conversation is that I was able to finally get down what it was about Houston that I didn't like. Sure, there was the boring, unchallenging, homogenous neighborhood we lived it, but it was just more the fact that, even though I'm a person who's very prone to regret, I can't really find a single thing about Houston that I regret not taking in more. Okay, that's not entirely true. I wish I'd gone to more Oilers games. But other than that, the city just had absolutely nothing to offer. It was suburban without a good urban, unlike the suburbs of DC, New York or Chicago.

Ultimately, my suburban youth was as boring and frustrating as those felt in the suburbs of exciting cities. But where I can look back on Anchorage or even on my past years in DC and be sad that I didn't take in more of the city when I had the chance, I look back at Houston and can't find that regret for the simple fact that there was nothing that I should have been doing. Ouch.