Experience Maps

Here's a map of my school and the neighborhood.


Special places are numbered in blue.






















Here's a key to what those numbers mean:

1. School. You know what it's like to go to school, probably. The familiarity of every door, every desk, every creaky hinge and broken waterfountain. The particular way the air is different from the outside world, the way the windows change the light. I know where the building is shy, and I know what's hidden in the recessed parts. I know how to work the windowshades and how to lock the classrooms. I know the fonts of the posters on the walls. I know the feeling of the locker against my back and the way the floors feel against bare feet.
2. Cafeteria and Student Center. Having both people and food, it's a safe bet of somewhere to find your friends. Common sights include: Conor lying on a couch playing games on his computer, people throwing stuff in the Senior Center, people eating lunch, middle schoolers buying stuff from the vending machines, people napping, girls shreiking.
3. Bleachers behind Zartman. Good hill to roll down, a grassy spot with sun. Make sure you speak loudly to give fair warning to any couple that might be on Hookup Hill.
4. Franklin's. Soda, candy, ice cream, yogurt, weird hemp tea and kombucha, and greasy, greasy diner food. Also a nice gazebo area outside to peoplewatch.
5. The Woods behind McLean Gardens. Creek to wade in, woods to walk in, foresty places where no one can see you.
6. Playground. Countless games of ninja, going on the swings in the middle of the night, etc.
7. Armand’s Pizza. Lots of awkward check-splitting.
8. Chipotle. A standby. I almost always see people I know there, often teachers.
9. Z-Burger. How many kinds of milkshake have you tried?
10. Whole Foods. Free samples!
11. The Living Room.
12. Sullivan’s. Buy spray paint, temporary tattoos, etc. Lust after Lego and Playmobile sets from our childhoods.
13. Foxden and Robotics Lab. Coffee, tea, candy, and bagels. A TV where everyone watched the balloon boy fly. Robotics Lab underneath to hang out with nice boys who will grow up to be engineers. Scaffolding to climb on out back.
14. Sunny place to nap or eat lunch. Full of crazy carpenter bees in the spring who will fly into your face.

Of course it's a little silly to try and explain the personal significance of a place to someone who doesn't know it. Six years on this campus has layered so many experiences onto each building, each room, each tree. A few sentences about a 2D map just barely wades into the ocean of my connection to my school.

Here's another map, with people marked. These aren't people I necessarily think about very much. If my life were a movie, these wouldn't be the characters that celebrities got cast in. They're the recurring extras. Think about Ranjit from How I Met Your Mother, that little squirrel from Ice Age (props to James for thinking of that), or Mr. Yunioshi from Breakfast at Tiffany's.

As Louis CK says:

            "Have you ever met someone you don't know, again? Like, you don't actually know them, but they keep popping up, like God is running out of extras for the movie of your life."

Here's a map with some of those people

1. Lunch ladies. Sharon, Ms. Rebecca, Mr. Lester. They smile at you if you smile at them.
2. Janitors. Raphel, Ana, the nice young guy who washes windows.
3. Foxden guys. Mamadou, Ms. Osborn, the cute young guy everyone hits on.
4. Buildings and Grounds. Steve and Carlos.
5. Secret Service who follow Sasha and Malia around.
6. The man at Franklin’s. He'll knock off the tax if you don't have six pennies.
7. The lady at Danny Tindahan’s.
8. Homeless guy outside Popeye’s. He'll tell you Godbless if you smile and nod. I buy him sandwiches sometimes.
9. Metro humanitarians. Save the Children, Planned Parenthood, UNHCR.
10. Street Sense vendor.
11. Mika’s parents.

And of course, the hundreds of kids in my school who I know but not really, who I could pick out of a lineup but couldn't tell you their names. In high school, you're surrounded by people you don't know but with whom you share an enormous amount of common text- which teachers are hard, books you've all read in English, gossip, places, people. I don't know if the rest of life is like that.