My sentiments exactly

kaitlin:

justfakeit:

‘“Are you serious?’’ asked a secretary at an elementary school.’

Whatever formula they used to come to this conclusion is so, so, so BUNK!!!

God almighty—good schools?  Proclaiming there is diversity is definitely true (see the 30% asian population), but what about the majority of white people who very thinly veil their racism toward those minorities?  I guess they ranked on affordability and safety and everything like that, but shit man, go somewhere else for that—pay extra if you have to.  I’m glad I grew up there, but for the love of God, I would never, ever, ever subject my kids to that place.

Actually, my brother called me last night at midnight (that’s 1 am back east, he had just had a house-warming party; I think he was a little inebriated), and he told me about this report, but I didn’t find it until today.  We spent an hour and a half discussing how absurd it is.  Whew.

Damn. Even Mayor Koch is kind of like, “Ho ho, don’t know how this happened, but uh…sometimes it takes outsiders to think that this city isn’t shitty!” Because only outsiders would think that way.

Just kidding. It really isn’t that bad. For all of the times I hate on Quincy, I’m pretty glad I grew up here, too. There are a lot of really great things about growing up here. But they’re great in a “I’m glad I grew up in a huge, blue-collar city instead of some rich suburb or rustic-yet-boring rural town because I learned things that are probably important and singular to this place” kind of way, which is more of an in-retrospect kind of great, and not actually great.

For the record, though, my elementary school education wasn’t terrible. With Quincy being really close to Boston and also weirdly close to like, every major historical point in Massachusetts, our field trips rocked. But then it all went downhill.

Oh. And “thinly veiled” racism? When I graduated, one of my Asian friends wrote in my yearbook that I was the first white person to talk to him and become friends with him. I was pretty stunned, since we met when we were FOURTEEN.

So…huh. Quincy’s a weird, weird place. You can add me to the “shocked” list.

I think growing up in Quincy was JUST shitty enough that you wouldn’t become an ignorant douchebag about the workings of the world… but JUST good enough that you could get somewhere (e.g. out of Quincy) with what you learned there.