We used waste hours just walking around.

In the past few years -- since I started university, I guess -- I've come to realise a few things. That things aren't always black and white -- or conversely, that they can be. That beer really is delicious and should be consumed as often as possible. That I was really f-ing sheltered growing up, and that the suburbs are both good and bad. That the world is really very large, and my life is actually pretty small and inconsequential, in the grand scheme of things. And, yesterday, that bad things really do happen to good people. I could go on, but those are the most important.

I grew up -- and still live -- in one of those little neighbourhoods on the edge of the city, where the houses were all built according to the same five plans and almost everyone is white (seriously, and that holds true even now) and middle/upper-middle class and has some sort of smiling dog. Everyone's parents are still together, and half your friends have a cottage somewhere -- if you don't, you've at least got an RV or a boat or something. Vacations to Disney and every extracurricular you can imagine and the assumption that you'll go to university and get a decent degree (if you're a girl, a MRS degree should also be in the plan.) My childhood was spent riding my bike around quiet streets with my brother and the two neighbour kids who were remotely our age. 25 cent slurpies at Red Rooster and babysitting. There was nothing bad about any of it, unless you count scraped knees. Orderly and idyllic.

Anyways, what I'm getting at is that is that yes, I was one of the really sheltered ones. My entire worldview was my neighbourhood, my school, and any place my parents thought might be safe enough for more than five minutes. I had almost no concept of much outside of any of this until high school, when -- like half of you, I guess -- the world started to be too small. Branching out was necessary, spread your wings, whatever the eff else. And that was the same point, too, when I started to realise exactly how large the world was. My normal suburban lifestyle was really just like its houses, probably only going to go a few ways. Odd feeling, coming to that conclusion. (I don't mean to really knock the suburbs, by the way. It's good to grow up that safe. But when you manage to do something like get lost taking the LRT...well, there's probably a problem.)

That's why the Arcade Fire video was my favourite "map", I suppose. Because it's a visual representation of my feelings about the suburbs and growing up in them and how it might make you crazy some days and exactly how small and ordered my life really is. When it zooms out (which we all do, playing around on Google Earth, everything getting further and further), and everything you know gets smaller and less significant...it makes you think, I guess. (And there. An explanation other than just "I love Arcade Fire.")