Thirty years ago and today

Thirty years ago I lived in Forest Hills, which I didn't know back then was just a tiny slice of Queens, New York, and was very very young and thought to myself, maybe one day I'll go to college. At the time, the only college I knew the name of was Queens College, so I thought, one day I will go to Queens College.

Now it's thirty years later, and every time I walk (run) up the stairs of the E/F station at 71st/Continental to catch the Q64 to Queens College in Flushing to be there in time for my grad classes, I catch sight of the old stomping (and swinging) ground, good old Parker Towers, where I read and cried over Beth in Little Women and created Planet Shazu with friend Judy, and played Julie of the wolves and missed school buses and watched the health nut run around the center smiley-faced fountain and collected lady bugs with my Japanese friends, and walked alone across big bad Yellowstone boulevard to buy my mom some diapers at the Waldbaums which no longer exists. And where in the distant past I dreamed my dreams about college.